Survival
by AnaWilding
Summary: In their final hour on LV-426, the team becomes separated, each struggling to reach the dropship before the nuclear reactor detonates. As Hudson fights to free himself from alien clutches, he reflects on his past and what it means to live. On the receiving end of a teammate's ultimate sacrifice, Vasquez considers how her fate has always been defined by her encounters with death.
1. Fate and Fortune

These were the things nightmares were made of.

The hair-raising scramble of an insect; the sickeningly slick black exoskeleton and distended head filled with long, menacing teeth; a screech so alarming and unnatural that there was almost no known sound to compare it to.

Hudson's vision was slightly blurred as he regained consciousness. His heart pounded hard in his chest and he felt almost paralyzed with fear as his brain tried to make sense of what was happening.

He was being dragged through a dark and narrow space, the air around him humid, smelling of stagnant water and acrid blood. He felt pain, mostly in his left leg, where an alien claw was clamped down hard above his knee, tearing into his flesh.

Hudson could vaguely remember being pulled into the floor, furiously shooting off rounds in an attempt to free himself. He recalled the look of shock on Hicks' face as the alien pulled him down. Hicks had shouted his name, tried to hold onto him to keep him from going under. And as a claw came up over his face, out of the corner of his eye, Hudson remembered seeing the others: Ripley, Newt, Gorman, and above him, Vasquez, her gloved hand trying to reach for him, fear in her eyes. Then everything had gone black.

He assumed he had been knocked out by the fall; pain throbbed in his head and blood dripped from a cut above his eye. He had dropped his gun at some point during that time.

As the sinister monster towed his body behind it, Hudson felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, an instinct to keep fighting to stay alive. "Think you're tough, you ugly motherfucker?!" he yelled wildly, then he began kicking at the claw that held his leg. "Fuck! You!" he shouted between kicks. His hands grasped frantically at the vent walls, trying to grab a hold of something, but there was nothing other than the occasional metal seam to hold on to.

The creature snorted and he could have sworn it was an alien laugh at his feeble escape attempt. Then the claw around his leg tightened and pain overwhelmed him. Hudson let out an anguished cry, a stream of profanities echoing through the tight space. Blood seeped down his leg and dripped onto the floor of the vent and he was dragged through it, leaving a smeared trail of crimson behind him.

His hands fumbled desperately, trying to pull off the alien talons. When his attempts failed, Hudson grasped at the claw in misery, trying to take some of the tension off his leg, but his hands were slippery with blood and kept sliding off. He wailed in frustration, powerless to help himself.

It dawned on him then that he was going to die. He knew that he was being taken to the 'nest', which held the bodies of the others: colonists of Hadley's Hope and his fallen comrades. Alongside them, that is where he would die too. Of course, first he would have to be face-fucked into playing host to a gestating alien life form that would eventually burst from his chest. The situation wasn't ideal.

And it seemed things were not about to get better anytime soon. His eyes fell upon a gaping hole in the floor of the vent, just meters away.

"Goddammit," he said to himself, preparing himself for the fall. Then his captor descended through the gap and Hudson plummeted ten feet.

The impact of the fall was broken mostly by his left arm. Immediately, he felt his wrist snap and the agony of it rivalled that of his ravaged thigh. He groaned, writhing against the metal grill floor.

Hudson held his wrist and shut his eyes tightly. He was as good as dead. The sooner he accepted his fate, the easier it would be. He exhaled in resignation.

"I'll be with you soon Lou," he said aloud.

. . .

Hudson buttoned up his grey blazer over his vintage AC/DC t-shirt. It was cold for a May evening in Dallas, Texas and he shivered.

"Yo Ian, where the hell you bringing us, man?" He yelled good-naturedly to his roommate.

"Relax Will, it's just around the corner," Ian replied and then turned to their other two friends. "Ever since they've been deploying this kid on actual missions, he's been acting like an entitled little bitch," joked Ian and the others laughed.

Hudson smirked and pulled Ian's John Deere cap down over his eyes.

The two had met in high school. Each growing up in dysfunctional households, they both moved out at age seventeen when they jointly scraped together enough for first and last months' rent. Now, eight years later, they remained best friends. Even though most of Hudson's time was now spent away, Ian kept a room for Hudson in his house in Fort Worth so that he always had somewhere to come home to.

"Do they even let you have nights out in the Marine Corps, Will?" asked his friend Asha, her long black hair swishing against her dark leather jacket.

"They do, Ash," replied Hudson, putting his arm around her. "We're on a strict 'work hard, play hard' regimen." He grinned and Asha pushed him away amiably.

"Well, we're glad to have you back, man," said Trey, taking Asha's spot beside Hudson as they crossed the street. He and Trey had played football together in high school, and Hudson had almost talked him into joining the Corps. But Trey had always wanted to pursue medicine and since found his calling as a Dallas paramedic.

Now Trey slapped a large hand on Hudson's back. "The place hasn't been the same without you, Will."

"Yeah, it's been a lot quieter," remarked Asha, smiling sweetly behind her lip and eyebrow piercings.

"How long you back for?"

"Until August, then we ship out again," replied Hudson. "I got a construction gig to fill the time, keep me from getting too soft while I'm here."

"You could stand to soften up a bit, you're starting to make me look bad," said Ian. "And that blazer, who'd you think you are kid?"

"Don't listen to him Will, you look good," said Asha, "Ian would wear his exterminator jump suit if Kerri didn't dress him regularly."

Hudson looked over at Ian with raised eyebrows, catching a vital piece of information in Asha's comment. "I knew it!" He exclaimed to his friend with a laugh. "You fucker! I've been home for two days and you didn't tell me you and Kerri were back together?"

"Hey look, we're here!" declared Ian, dodging the conversation and looking up at the building at which they had just arrived.

They were standing outside of a bar now, with an unassuming panelled glass exterior, a clamor of music and voices coming from inside. An illuminated sign on the outside was cast in geometric gold letters.

"_Fate and Fortune?_" Hudson read, and looked at Ian incredulously. "We came all the way to Dallas and you brought us to a damn hipster dive?"

"Well, it used to be _The Tipsy Badger_," said Ian with a touch of disappointment. "You don't remember, man?" he asked Hudson.

Hudson looked at the building again and something in his memory was triggered. The wooden trim and old leaded glass delivered a hit of déjà vu, and then a sudden rush of recollection: getting smashed off two beers, feeling loss and stress and uncertainty, wanting more from his life. But then there was also a memory of friendship, hopefulness.

"_The Badger_," Hudson confirmed and nodded his head slowly in approval and Ian grinned.

"The old owner wasn't big on carding back in the day," Ian said, turning to the others. "Will and I drank in here when we were, like, fifteen or something. Things were tough back then and we said we'd come back in ten years when we made something of ourselves."

"How do you remember that, man?" Hudson asked his friend in amazement.

"I always did, bro," answered Ian. "So, here we are, ten-ish years later, to drink to our success. We made it, man—you're a space-hero in the US Colonial Marine Corps… and I'm an exterminator," Ian laughed.

"Hey, they're more similar than you think," said Hudson. "Thanks Ian, I really appreciate this." He pulled his friend's shoulder into a side hug, feeling a bit sentimental.

"Can we take this tender moment and bring it inside, please?" asked Asha, her hand making an encapsulating gesture at Hudson and Ian. "I need a drink."

.

As the four friends sat in their booth by the window, sipping their first round of pints, it didn't take them long before they were feeding off each other's humour and laughing uncontrollably. Hudson wiped tears from his eyes, snorting with laughter as the three shared in telling the story of Ian getting too drunk at a holiday party with Kerri, and ending the night by accidentally walking into her parents' bedroom and trying to climb into bed with them.

It was amazing how easily the group fell back into their friendship and he realized how much he had missed them.

When the laughter died down and they had moved on to more subdued conversations, Ian nudged Hudson in the ribs suddenly. "Hey, look at that girl," he said to Hudson, his eyes looking over at a young woman walking up to the bar.

Hudson followed Ian's eyes as inconspicuously as he could manage, and he turned back to Ian and nodded. From what he had gathered in a glance, Ian couldn't be blamed for noticing the long legs and short leather skirt, shiny caramel-colored hair and delicate features.

"So, you going to go talk to her?" Ian asked Hudson suddenly.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you, dumbass," replied Ian. "Where have you been for the last twenty minutes—I'm back with Kerri and things are actually good between us… Despite accidentally trying to sleep with her mom," he added.

Hudson laughed at him. "And her dad."

"He was cool with it. You need to talk to that girl, man."

Hudson took a breath and looked back at the bar where the girl stood, waiting to get the bartender's attention. "Okay," he said after a moment and Ian stifled a noise of triumph.

Hudson downed the rest of his beer and walked over to the bar, slightly nervous.

Hudson walked up to the counter beside her but left a sizable gap between the two of them, trying to play it cool. "Hey," Hudson said to her.

The girl looked over at him. "Hey," she said back.

"You havin' a good night?" Hudson casually asked.

"Fine," she said, coolly.

The bartender came over to take their order. "What can I get for you guys?" she asked.

"Sauv blanc," the girl replied curtly.

"And you?" the bartender asked Hudson.

"A pint of the red ale, thanks," he said apprehensively as he turned back to the young woman beside him. "So, what brings you here tonight?"

"A friend's twenty-third," she responded, and she nodded over to an area of couches where a small group of men and women sat, looking like they belonged on the set of a fashion shoot, not in a mediocre bar in Downtown Dallas, having bottle service with a mid-shelf vodka. "How 'bout you?"

"A bit of a reunion," replied Hudson and he gestured in the direction of his three friends in the booth by the window. "I'm back here on a three-month leave from the U.S. Colonial Marine Corps." After five years with the Corps, he still liked the way it sounded when he said it out loud.

"What's that?" the girl asked him apathetically.

"What's the Marine Corps?" Hudson responded with a frown.

She seemed to ignore his response and asked instead, "You belong to that group of misfits over there?" She was looking over at his table of friends and there was a tone of judgement in her voice that caught Hudson off guard.

"They'd probably prefer the term, _motley crew_," Hudson replied, brushing off her comment, "but yeah, I'm with them." There was a bit of a strained silence, so Hudson pressed on, "I'm Will, by the way."

"Gwen," said the girl, with a pretty smile and tilt of her head, her eyes scanning him over contemplatively.

The bartender placed the drinks on the counter and stated what they owed.

Hudson gestured for the girl to put away her card. "I got it," he said to her, pulling out his payment card, adjusting the amount on the console to cover both their drinks and a generous tip.

"Perfect," Gwen said to him and she picked up her glass of wine and began to walk away.

"Hey, where you goin'?" Hudson called after her.

Gwen gave him an amused smile, shaking her head. "Sorry but" —she laughed—"not going to happen. Thanks for the drink." Then she turned and walked back to her group of friends, without looking back.

Left on his own, Hudson leaned on the bar counter in defeat. It suddenly occurred to him that the bartender had witnessed everything, and he looked up at her.

The bartender was tall and she exuded a relaxed confidence, her light grey tank top showing off her toned, tattooed arms, which were crossed casually over her chest. She stared back at him, and her grey-green eyes looked incredulous.

"That was painful to watch," she said from behind the bar.

"Come on, it wasn't that bad," replied Hudson, feeling his ears grow warm with a tinge of embarrassment.

"Working here, I've seen a lot of people get shut down. That was bad. That was a train wreck," she said and she shook her head slowly for effect. She had a bulky ponytail encapsulating hundreds of delicate black braids, which now cascaded over the smooth, dark skin of her bare shoulders.

Hudson stared at her in amusement. "Okay, you seem to be the expert, what should I have done differently?"

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah, I do," answered Hudson. "Hit me with it."

She leaned in and Hudson was struck by the subtle scent of fresh soap and citrus. "You should have walked when she insulted your friends."

Immediately Hudson knew that she was right. He nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, I should have," he said. "And what did I do?"

"You bought her a drink."

"Hmm," Hudson hung his head defeatedly and she laughed.

"Well I should get back to it," she said nodding to the far end of the bar where a couple was now standing, waiting for service. She smiled a goodbye to him, revealing perfectly white teeth and dimpled cheeks.

As she began to leave, Hudson found himself calling after her. "Hey, what's your name?"

She turned and the dimpled smile reappeared on her face. "Louise," she said, doubling back quickly and holding out her hand to him.

"Will Hudson," he introduced himself, accepting her hand. Her handshake was strong and confident, just like her demeanor and she held his gaze.

"Hope you have better luck tonight, Will Hudson," she replied. "And hey—don't settle for less than what you deserve. Life is too short." Then with a cool and perfectly executed wink, she turned and moved to the other end of the bar and Hudson was left staring.

. . .

Hudson thought about those eyes now. Grey-green and captivating, like nothing he had ever seen before. And never would again.

Once, while he was away on an eight-month deployment, he tried to pinpoint the colour within the varied green camo patches of his combat utilities, desperate to find anything that brought the idea of her closer to him. But nothing in the uniform, nor in his stark, manufactured surroundings, ever came close to the colour of the eyes he remembered. He decided that a colour so beautiful could only be paralleled in nature: grey-green like eucalyptus, or delicately dried lichen on a rock face. Shallow water over sand.

The thoughts took him away from his dismal present situation, so he clung to them, trying to recall other details of her beautiful face: the dimples, the dark, expressive eyebrows and her big laugh—always laughing, always loving him.

He remembered lying in the grass with her, barely two weeks after meeting her. In the warmth of a morning in early June, they laid next to one another under the filtered shade of a willow tree, talking lazily, the thrill of being together still fresh and new.

"I think I'm going to get another tattoo," he had said to her, and he motioned to a spot on top left of his chest. "Louise, in big letters, right here."

"I like that," she had played along. "I mean, it's about time you did. We've been dating for, what, twelve days now?"

"Glad you approve," he replied playfully, "I'm really gonna do it, you know."

"Okay great. I'm looking forward to seeing my name there every time I take off your shirt," Louise had said, mischievously slipping her hand under his t-shirt, kissing him tenderly as she slid her hand over his chest.

Twelve days after meeting her and he already knew that he loved her. Twelve minutes after meeting her, he knew.

. . .

Hudson sat back down in the booth next to Ian. He felt lighter, happier, a jolt of adrenaline running through his veins. He looked back at the bar and he was pleasantly surprised to see the bartender—Louise—staring back at him. She smiled with her beautiful white teeth and dimples and a self-conscious part of him wanted to look away, but he held her gaze and gave her a little nod and a smile back. Then Hudson turned back to Ian who looked at him dubiously.

"What are you grinnin' about?" asked Ian. "That didn't look like it went too well." He motioned to the girl named Gwen, with the caramel-coloured hair, who was now getting cozy with one of her male friends on the couches across the room. The man beside Gwen was whispering something into her ear and she was laughing prettily, but then she was looking back at Hudson, as if she wanted Hudson to see her with someone else, to show him that she was too good for him.

Hudson turned away from it all. "You know, I realized something," he said to Ian and the others, "Life's too short to waste time on shitty people. Here's to you guys."

Asha gave a drunken whoop of appreciation and Trey said, "Hell yeah," in agreement as Hudson held up his glass in cheers to his three friends and they drank.

It wasn't long after Hudson set down his drink that the sound of shattering glass came from behind him. He turned quickly to see a scene unfolding at the couches where Gwen was: A blonde-haired man looking aggravated, grabbing the guy next to Gwen and pulling him to his feet roughly by the front of his crisp, collared shirt and swiftly punching him in the face.

Gwen screamed and pulled at the arm of the man, trying to hold him back. Then a third fellow jumped in and a small brawl broke out amongst the group.

At once, Hudson felt himself getting to his feet. Without knowing why, he began moving to the scene, feeling an engrained responsibility to help, something no doubt instilled in him from his time in the Corps.

As he moved across the room, he saw Gwen get knocked to the floor, her girlfriends yelling and trying to pull her out of the way of the scuffle.

Then Louise was jumping over the bar, hollering at everyone to calm down. She deftly pulled back the arm of a man before he could throw a punch and she yelled to one of the servers, "Where the hell is Jason?!" Hudson suspected that whoever Jason was, he was meant to be the one providing security at _Fate and Fortune_ and was doing a lousy job of it.

As Louise wrestled with Gwen's former suitor, Hudson began damage control. In a few quick movements, he hoisted Gwen off the floor, pulling her to her feet and out of harm's way before she could be trampled.

Then he moved back to the brawl, pinpointing the main source of the aggression: the broad, blonde instigator who threw the first punch. The man was roaring unintelligible profanities and wielding well-aimed punches at a guy with a bloody nose.

Hudson moved in behind him and promptly grabbed his left arm and twisted it behind his back. With his other hand, he securely held the back of the man's neck, causing him to struggle in surprise, his right arm flailing but unable to find a target. Hudson moved his foot in front of his opponent's right leg and pushed his body forward, knocking the man off balance, then he eased him to the floor, holding him there with a knee on his back, a hand still at his neck, and the left arm twisted just enough to temporarily incapacitate, but not enough to do any real damage. It was a maneuver he had executed hundreds of times in combat training but hadn't had a chance to apply in real life, until now.

With the main aggressor squirming and swearing against the floor in his grasp, Hudson turned his attention to Louise. It was apparent that someone had pushed her and she was now doubled over, hands on the coffee table, which was scattered with broken glass. She was standing up now, looking irritated, holding her hand.

A sudden blow to the face startled Hudson as a fist hit him under the eye. He cursed and looked up to see the fellow in the collared shirt who had been cozy with Gwen, appearing surly and inebriated, evidently unsure of who he was supposed to be fighting.

"What the fuck, man?" Hudson yelled in annoyance. "I'm clearly helpin' ya out here," and motioning towards the man he had pinned to the ground.

Before he could receive a response, Louise stepped in, trying to curb the remaining assailant's aggression. "Buddy, the fight's over, take it easy, okay?" she said assertively.

Then, a large man came up beside Louise. "I'll take it from here, Lou," he said, and he grabbed the man in the collared shirt forcefully by the arm.

"Thanks Jason," said Louise and she held her right hand tightly, blood visible between her fingers.

Hudson looked down at the man pinned under his knee. "You gonna be cool, man?" He asked, and when the guy nodded his face against the floor, Hudson stood up and pulled his sullen opponent to his feet, handing him over to Jason who escorted both men swiftly to the exit.

At this point, Ian came up beside Hudson, his hand on his shoulder. "That was frickin' nuts! You alright, man?"

"Yeah," Hudson said, smiling at his friend's enthusiasm. He had almost forgotten how uneventful things were around here. While dealing with confrontation was part of Hudson's job description, witnessing a bar fight was a novelty for Ian.

Ian pulled him in the direction of where Trey and Asha were standing now. He was talking rapidly, almost incomprehensibly, describing to Hudson the events as he had seen them.

"—Then all of a sudden you're just off, making a beeline for the fight, and I'm like, "yo, what the fuck is this kid doing,"—then you're, like, pulling the hot girl off the floor and we were like, "shit!" and then you turn and jump into the fight and we were like, "sick!"—"

"You okay Will?" asked Trey. Hudson nodded.

"Not gonna lie, that was pretty badass," said Asha and she looked genuinely impressed—something he wasn't sure he had ever seen from her before.

"Hey, do you guys mind if I just take a minute—" Hudson said breaking free from Ian's grasp and looking back at Louise. She had returned to her spot behind the bar and was talking with one of the servers. "There's something I need to do. Just order another round, I'll be right back."

He turned and his friends jeered after him good-naturedly and he smiled.

As he approached the bar, he passed Gwen. She stood with her friends, putting her coat on and she looked up at him, something resembling humiliation on her face. "Hey Will," she said to him quietly as he passed. "Thanks for your help."

For a moment, Hudson considered ignoring her, but he knew that he couldn't be that petty, so he paused and looked at her, accepting her thanks with a nod. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," she said, looking remorseful.

"Good. Take it easy, Gwen," he said simply. And as he walked past her and up to the bar, he could feel her gaze on his back.

"It's really okay," Louise was saying to the server next to her as Hudson approached the bar.

"Just take a break, Lou," The server replied kindly, and Hudson could tell they were friends. "I'll cover you here. My section is pretty much gone anyway, Jason's kicking them all out now. Jeez, you basically did his job for him tonight." Then she looked up and saw Hudson and added, "Both of you."

Louise laughed. "Thanks Kat," she said to her friend and before moving to the other end of the bar, Kat gave Louise a significant look; some coded communication between friends that Hudson was not able to decipher.

When he and Louise were alone, Hudson gazed at her. "How you doing?" he asked, glancing at her hand, which had a black cloth napkin wrapped around it.

"Yeah, fine," said Louise.

"Mind if I take a look?" Hudson asked and Louise reluctantly held her hand out to him. He held it in his, her skin warm and soft, her fingers slender and delicate next to his own. He turned her hand over and began gently unwrapping the cloth napkin that bound it. The underside of her hand was lighter than the rest of her skin tone, some subtle scars and calluses at the top of her palm; she had hardworking hands.

"You're pretty brave, jumping into a fight like that," Hudson said to her as he removed the cloth and set it aside. On the heel of her hand was a bleeding, curved puncture from where glass had pierced her skin. Smaller cuts of varying shapes surrounded it, like satellites orbiting a planet.

"You too," she replied, her dimples hinting at a smile. "You seemed to know how to handle yourself out there… for the most part," she added with a laugh, tilting her head and studying his cheek, where he suspected a bruise was beginning to form under his eye.

"Think I would have gotten one to the other eye if you hadn't stopped the guy, so thanks for that," Hudson replied genuinely.

Louise flashed him her perfect smile and her captivating, light-coloured eyes sparkled. It had been a long time since he had been this attracted to someone. It was more than just the way she looked—even from the briefest of encounters with her, he got the sense that she was level-headed and compassionate, but also brave.

And while he wasn't certain, he got the feeling that she liked him too.

He gently wrapped her hand back up in the napkin and looked up at her. "So, I think this might need some stitches," he said to her regretfully and her nose wrinkled in defiance. "My friend is a paramedic," Hudson continued, glancing over at Trey. "He would know for sure."

Louise nodded in reluctant agreement. "Yeah, okay. Thanks Will," she said.

Hudson was about to call Trey over when he hesitated and looked back at Louise. After a pause, he said, "I'm aware of the effect my friend Trey has on women, so I should probably just ask you this before you meet him, or else I won't stand a chance..."

The smile appeared back on Louise's face and she crossed her strong, tattooed arms, looking at him with interest. "Ask me what?"

Hudson took a breath. "Can I take you out sometime?" He asked, feeling his face grow warm. "For coffee? Dinner… drinks… any of those things?"

She laughed at the broadness of his request. "Yes," she said easily. "Coffee tomorrow? Noon?"

Hudson nodded. "Then we can do dinner and drinks after, that makes sense," he said, only partially joking.

"We'll make a day of it," she said cheerfully, and it was amazing how easy it was to talk with her; he didn't have to guess at what she was thinking, she seemed to show it openly, and incredibly, her demeanor seemed to mirror exactly what he was feeling towards her.

Hudson grinned. Suddenly enamoured with her, he could barely look away. "Or we could just start our date now, I could take you to the ER to get stitches. I hear it's nice there this time of night."

Louise laughed wholeheartedly. She gestured for him to move in closer, as if she was going to tell him a secret. Then she leaned over the bar and placed a soft kiss on his cheek, under his eye where he had gotten hit.

When her lips left his skin, he felt them there still, warm and lasting. Like the ink of a tattoo, the feeling remained with him, imprinting her signature on his skin, leaving her mark on him forever. It was something he would never forget.

. . .

Even now, in this wretched place, in his miserable state, he could recall the feeling.

Of course, they had shared many more amazing and intimate moments after that, but it was that sudden kiss in the bar that somehow broke down his defences and challenged his prior notions of love: maybe such a thing did exist, maybe he deserved to know what it felt like.

And while he never did get Louise's name tattooed on his chest, he did write it on the chest plate of his body armour on the first day of his August deployment; their first length of time apart from one another.

Three years after that, in memory of her, he added the symbol of a red love knot next to her name; it was meant to represent eternity.

Now, as he was being dragged to his death, he held his broken wrist over her name on his chest and he remembered her words: "Life is too short."

It had been true for her. It would soon be true for him too.


	2. Surrender or Sacrifice

Vasquez hated the feeling of being chased. She was one to fight, not run.

Retreat felt distressing, like she was no longer in control, scrambling to stay ahead of what was in pursuit. It transported her back to another time in her life when she had been forced to flee, the disturbing recollections further fracturing any remaining composure she might have had.

As Vasquez moved through the air duct, she could barely make out the others—Ripley, Newt, Hicks, Gorman—ahead of her. She had opted to head up the rear, cover the others as they made their escape, trusting herself to be the crew's best line of defence against the creatures that now hunted them.

Newt was leading the way, impressively familiar with the maze of ducts. Unlike the others, who had to crouch in the low clearance of the vents, the young girl moved at full speed, unhindered. And as Ripley tried to keep up with her, more distance grew between the members of the team and soon, the diminishing beam from Ripley's flashlight disappeared completely.

The red emergency lights of the station seeped through the grilled openings above, now the only source of illumination guiding the way forward. Vasquez squinted in the dim light, struggling to make out the shapes in front of her. Being chased was one thing, but being chased in near pitch-dark was something else entirely. In these surroundings, every sound echoed, every shadow represented a potential threat.

Vasquez moved backwards through the vent as fast as she could manage, her pulse rifle poised to strike whatever ugly beast that came into view. The muscles in her thighs burned and her back ached from the crouched position she was forced to assume, and she longed to stand up and straighten her legs, stretch her spine. Sweat dropped down her face and her heart pounded at the sound of sheet metal flexing and the baleful, growling hiss of something that drew near.

The dark stretch of duct instantly lit up as the rounds exploded from her pulse rifle. Like a strobe light, her surroundings became visible for split seconds, the shots illuminating what was in front of her; freeze frames of barred teeth, a haunting tangle of limbs and claws.

They were hard to kill. She shuffled backward as she fired, and just when it appeared to be dead, it seemed to rise again, clambering towards her. She fired another series of rounds, dismayed to see her ammunition counter drop to single digits.

"Vasquez, move!" she heard Gorman shout to her urgently from down the vent.

As the alien slowed, a second one came up from behind to replace it, and as she rounded a corner, she concentrated on her aim and fired the remaining shots at the new offender, delivering eight more hits to the chest and throat and the alien fell as the mag clicked empty.

She dropped the rifle and pulled out her trusty vintage M39 from her cross-draw holster.

Then she heard a sound and looked up as a creature descended from a connecting duct above.

Three shots fired from the pistol struck the alien's torso before it landed on top of her. She fought to free herself from its weight, kicking at the appendages and shooting at close range, trying to keep its head and razor-sharp teeth away from her. She wrestled furiously, feeling its brute strength and cold, wet extremities graze her skin; she might have felt terror or disgust from the close interaction, had she not been so focused on staying alive. Her body pumped with adrenaline and with a forceful kick, she pinned its neck against the wall of the vent with her combat boot, aimed the gun at its head and pulled the trigger until there was nothing left to fire.

When a hissing sound erupted from the dying alien, she felt the pain almost instantly, and she knew that acid blood was burning into the flesh of her legs. It was a searing pain unlike anything she had ever experienced and she yelled out in anguish, crawling away to the best of her ability.

She heard Hicks call her name, but she could barely move towards the sound. Pain scorched through her legs and she was afraid to look down, fearing the gruesome condition that she might see. She released the empty magazine from her pistol and shouted in frustration.

A part of her had known that her death in this place was an inevitability.

It all seemed to be confirmed, just minutes ago, when she saw Hudson get pulled into the floor. She had rushed forward to try to reach for him, to help pull him back, but it happened too quickly and in a matter of seconds he had disappeared, his yells abruptly silenced. Her hand had remained momentarily outstretched, her mind struggling to comprehend that he was gone.

Just as she had when Drake died, she felt shock and an immediate rush of loss. But there was also the inexplicable feeling that if Hudson was gone, she wasn't going to make it out alive either.

They had been partners. From the beginning, she and Hudson had baffled their teammates with how well they worked together in the field. Both competitive by nature, they quickly formed a strategic working relationship, developing an almost uncanny ability to work in sync and predict each other's actions. It was something Sergeant Apone had noticed early on, and the more they consistently exceeded the expectations set for them, the more he ensured they were paired together during combat drops, heading up the crew as the First Squad's gun team.

"Put a couple toddlers together and they'll babysit each other," Apone had once said, his reasoning behind their success. It was as good a theory as any. In seeing the way she and Hudson pestered each other while off duty, a person could be forgiven for assuming they wouldn't cooperate well on the job. But in truth, she knew that there was trust and mutual respect between them, and that was what made it all work.

At least it had been. Like so many of the others, he was now gone. The realization felt like a hard punch to the gut.

Of course, by the way things seemed to be going, soon she would be gone too. She felt blood beginning to soak through the shreds of her pant legs below the knee, then the vibration of movement through the vent and she cringed.

This was it. Immobilized and without fire power, she would have no way to defend herself against what was approaching.

. . .

Vasquez ran down the crowded alley, tripping over debris, the derelict space a sordid mess of trash, used clothing and drug paraphernalia. This was one of the worst parts of town: Rojas territory.

"Over here," said Carmen breathlessly and she ushered Vasquez down an adjoining alley. Vasquez followed her younger sister, no reason to argue with the girl who knew the area much better than she did.

Vasquez had only lived there until age seven when her father, fearful of the increasing gang violence, had brought her to the United States, to New Orleans, where he had grown up himself. While she had returned less than a year ago, her sister Carmen had lived in Ciudad Juárez her whole life, had to deal with these surroundings; the people they were now running from.

While she hadn't given it much thought, today was Vasquez's fifteenth birthday. A year ago, on this day, she had watched her father take his last breath after a man he owed money to broke into their New Orleans apartment and shot him twice in the chest. Several weeks later, with nothing left to lose, she found herself returning to Juárez to try to get her sister out and start a new life.

As the two girls crouched in the alley now, Vasquez ran her fingers over the stolen 9mm semiautomatic that was tucked in the back of her pants. She heard shouting and she knew they were close. But instead of pulling out the handgun, she quickly removed the backpack she wore, unzipping it and taking out her own American passport, as well as the cash Carmen had stolen just hours earlier.

"Take this," she said urgently, handing it to Carmen. "Put it in your shirt, keep it hidden. Whatever happens, remember what you promised me."

Her younger sister hesitated for a moment, but then did as she was instructed. For the first time in the year that they had reconnected, Carmen looked genuinely scared.

Carmen was only twelve, but she had already experienced more than her share of difficulties living there. For the past few years, a teen street gang called the Rojas had been steadily engaging her, involving her in their illicit work, priming her to one day take on an active role in their core group.

Upon her return, Vasquez began quietly observing her sister's connections to the gang. From recruitment of other kids, to running errands for the inner-city dealers, Carmen seemed to do what was asked of her, and it became clear that, at some point, the rough group of teens had become Carmen's stand-in family.

So, Vasquez began patiently strategizing, spending the year regaining her sister's trust, infiltrating the group with the intention of pulling her sister away from it. Although still young herself, Vasquez already appeared tougher than most of the kids in the gang. She participated where she needed to, remaining assertive but always unruffled. For the most part, the others either took no notice of her or they were too intimidated to mess with her.

Now, that was no longer the case. At the other end of the alley, a boy appeared, a fierce look on his childlike face. They knew him. The group called him _Asesino_, as he had a penchant for aggression and violence. Carmen had always seemed to bring out the softer side of him, affectionately referring to him as Ace. Until that moment, she would have considered him a friend.

"They're here!" he yelled into the air, making their location known. He stalked towards them, anger evident across his features. "Look at the couple of traitors, cowering in the trash," he spit and he pulled out a switchblade. They had seen him use it before.

Vasquez was crouching in front of Carmen, her mind racing. Swiftly, she picked up a piece of wood from a broken pallet beside her and stood, preparing to fight. "Back off, kid. I'll hurt you if I have to," she said ominously.

An overconfident Ace bolted towards her with the knife and Vasquez took her hardest swing at him, the wood hitting the side of his head, connecting with a jaw-breaking impact. The piece of pallet splintering into fragments and the boy fell to the ground, holding his face.

"Let's go!" Vasquez yelled, and she pulled Carmen behind her.

They were reaching the end of the alley when three other teens appeared, blocking their way. In front was Martina Diaz. At the sight of her, Vasquez knew they were in trouble.

Diaz was the unofficial leader. Violent and unpredictable, she was known for being a loose canon, but also a cunning mastermind of larceny. From early on, she had taken a shine to Carmen, so when Vasquez arrived from the United States out of the blue, Diaz was untrusting and suspicious of her. She would often call out Vasquez for being an outsider, nicknaming her _Francesa_, for her French-sounding first name—Jenette, after her father's Cajun mother.

Evidently, Diaz had reason to feel threatened. Because over the course of the year, Vasquez had succeeded in convincing Carmen to leave Juárez, to go back to the States with her. At night in their mother's small and crowded home, they quietly planned their escape. They had heard of a place in the city where they could get a counterfeit Permanent Residency Card for Carmen, but it didn't come cheap. So, first they would need money, lots of it. And they would need protection, at least one gun.

It was a risk, yes, but to stay and do nothing meant that her sister would have no future. For Vasquez, there was no other option.

_El riesgo siempre vive._

Yesterday, as they quietly went over the details of their plan together, Carmen began to look anxious, perhaps just beginning to consider the repercussions of what they were doing.

"I wonder how mom is going to take it when we don't come home tomorrow," she said.

"She probably won't even notice," replied Vasquez, unable to suppress the bitterness in her voice.

Unlike their father, who had always been a man of action, their mother preferred to live a life of indifference. For years, she had turned a blind eye to the dangers around them. Uncaring and unemotional, she had failed to look after Carmen, something Vasquez would not easily forgive.

For a moment they were both silent, then Vasquez turned to Carmen. "I need you to promise me something," she said, and her sister stared back at her, her young face looking so innocent that it was hard to believe some of the things she had seen and done.

"Promise that if anything bad happens, you'll take my passport and the money and make a break for it."

"Jennita, don't say things like that," Carmen objected, "We're going to get the Green Card and make it through to El Paso, just like you planned. Everything will be fine."

"Just promise me, _nena_," Vasquez insisted.

"Alright, I promise," Carmen eventually said with a frown. Vasquez took her hand firmly and held it in hers, showing her that they had just made a pact that couldn't be broken.

Later that night, they set their plan in motion as Carmen arrived at Martina Diaz's place with the lie that she had been kicked out of the house. Martina had believed it, letting Carmen in, offering to share her mattress.

Vasquez had anxiously waited outside at their agreed upon location, not far from there. Around three in the morning, when she was certain the teen was asleep, Carmen carefully took the gun from Martina's bedside and located the stockpile of cash under the sink, taking half of it.

What they hadn't counted on was Diaz waking and finding out that the money had been taken so quickly, and before they had even left the neighbourhood, Carmen received a message on her phone that made her face turn pale: '_Estás muerta_'.

That was when they had started running.

Diaz stood in front of them now and the look on her face was one of pure rage. She stared Carmen down, her eyes ablaze at the betrayal, and the sight of her sent a jolt of fear through Vasquez. She instantly felt the shame and regret of getting her sister into this situation. This had been her plan that she had practically forced Carmen into. Now, she feared for her sister's life.

"You better say some final words, because this is where you die," said Diaz menacingly.

"Martina…" Carmen said, her hands raised in defense, but there was clearly nothing else she could think to say. Vasquez could hear remorse in her voice.

As Diaz approached, she pulled out a gun and pointed it at Carmen, but Vasquez quickly moved in front of her sister.

"Fucking move, _Francesa_," Diaz hissed, "This one is going into the skull of your back-stabbing _coño_ sister." And with voracious fury, Diaz lunged forward, hitting Vasquez hard in the temple with the back of the gun. Vasquez reeled, knocked to her knees. When her eyes refocused, she looked up to see Diaz pointing the gun at Carmen.

For a second, Vasquez met her sister's eyes. "Promise," she mouthed, a final reminder to her little sister. Carmen blinked in comprehension, her eyes filled with emotion.

Then Vasquez drew her gun swiftly and shot Martina Diaz point-blank in the head.

. . .

"Vasquez!"

Her mind was suddenly brought back to her present reality, a rush of pain reminding her of where she was and what had just happened. She blinked, surprised to see the outline of Lieutenant Gorman now hovering over her and she realized that the sound she had heard a moment ago had been his footsteps coming towards her.

Gorman took a second to look her over and she knew it was bad when he immediately grabbed her under the arms and began dragging her in the direction he came from.

She could barely move now, and she felt dizzy. Her head fell back against his chest.

"I got you," said Gorman in a reassuring voice and Vasquez shut her eyes.

Suddenly, there was a loud banging noise coming from behind them, and Vasquez craned her neck in time to see an alien burst through a grate in the floor, blocking their path. Gorman was quick to draw his pistol, firing five well-placed shots. As the alien convulsed and died, his gun made a disheartening 'click', indicating that he too was out of ammo.

For a surreal moment, things were calm. Gorman's arm was wrapped around her protectively, her head still resting against him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He was looking around, and she could tell that he was listening, trying to decide whether it was safe to move forward. But the calm was fleeting and soon, from either side of them, they could hear movement and they knew they were surrounded.

But something had caught Gorman's eye. About a meter away, there was a small grate in the ceiling of the vent. He moved towards it swiftly, dragging her with him so that they were underneath it. Then he took out a knife and wedged it under the grate cover to pry it off.

The opening was small, a supply duct much narrower than the one they were in now. It travelled upward for a short distance and then seemed to branch off perpendicularly.

"Climb up, quick," Gorman said to her and she looked at him, defiant.

"I'm toast, Gorman. Go without me!"

"You'll do it now, Private!" he shot back and he hoisted her into a seated position.

She could hear the aliens moving within the ducts and the apprehension ignited a small surge of momentum inside of her and she knelt up on her left leg, grunting through the pain until she was crouching underneath the opening.

Gorman had now taken out a grenade. "You'll have to move fast," he said, "I'm not sure about the blast radius in such a confined space."

"But-"

"There's no time!" he urged. "I'll be right behind you, get going!" He moved in close to her, holding his hands clasped together, offering a foothold to help her up.

"You always were an asshole, Gorman," she said, and there was a gleam of something unspoken in his eyes.

She leaned her weight on his shoulders and hauled her left leg into his clasped hands and he helped push her up through the small opening.

Vasquez bit back the urge to yell out as the movement jarred her injured legs. She forced herself to focus and she shimmied up through the tight space, guiding herself with her arms. About two meters up, she reached the adjoining horizontal duct and she threw her arms over the ledge. His hands were still at her feet and she held onto the duct opening with one arm as she reached a hand down to him.

"Come on!" she yelled. She looked down through the opening and when their eyes met, she knew that he didn't intend to follow her.

"Start climbing now, Private!"

"Fuck you!" she protested, "I'm not leaving you here!"

"That's an order, Vasquez!" He gave one final, frantic push upward and she grasped at the slippery sheet metal with outstretched fingers, pulling herself up and through the opening until she could no longer feel Gorman's hand on her foot.

Vasquez cursed his stubbornness, her displeasure echoing through the vents. However, she did as the Lieutenant instructed and began to move forward. Even if his plan didn't work, his intentions were courageous and selfless. She felt indebted to him. She hoped that he knew that.

She was on her stomach now, lying on the horizontal plane of the perpendicular duct and she broke into an army crawl, dragging herself forwards with her forearms. The metal confines were restrictive, the feeling of claustrophobia threatened to set in as the galvanized walls slid against her skin and the duct felt as if it was growing narrower.

From behind her, she heard a jumble of movement, the shriek of an alien, then Gorman's voice in a muffled yell. She continued forward quickly, but she shut her eyes and flinched at the sound of his distress, imagining the horror that he was experiencing. She knew he was trying to hold them off for as long as possible, trying to give her the best chance of getting away.

"Press it Gorman!" She yelled through the vent, hoping he could hear her. She didn't care how far away she was or wasn't, she couldn't stand the thought of him being ripped apart as he waited for her to make her escape. Again, his anguished voice rang out and she gritted her teeth. He needed to detonate the grenade, and he needed to do it now. "Fuck, Gorman, do it already!" she shouted. "Press it! Press it now!"

She felt the blast before she could hear it. A shockwave rippled through her body and a split-second later came the thundering sound and a crash of wreckage as pressure and heat exploded through the narrow space and sucked the oxygen out of the air around her. The metal floor beneath her groaned, growing hot as the entire vent shuddered, then lurched downward. In the pit of her stomach, she felt the sensation of falling, followed by a sudden, violent impact, and her surroundings grew dark.

.

* * *

A/N: Hi All, thanks for continuing to follow along, hope you enjoyed chapter 2!

It actually felt really hard to write an alternative version to the moment where Vasquez and Gorman detonate the grenade together... As much as I hated to see them go, that was one of the most memorable scenes in the film for me as it just felt so poignant and human. But of course, it was necessary to change it up in order to keep V alive, so I hope that did it justice.

Also hoping that the flashback to Vasquez's past didn't fall too flat.

Anyways, thanks so much for reading. Chapter 3 is in the works!


	3. Love and Loss

His surroundings passed him in a repetitious blur. He stared blankly at the industrial corridor walls, the never-ending lengths of utility piping and the bleak metal grate ceilings repeating to the point that he had no concept of where he was, or for what length of time he had been in the alien's grasp.

Every so often, his captor would descend a flight of stairs with him in tow, and Hudson would grab a hold of the steel guardrail, trying desperately to keep himself from being brought further into the maze. But each time he tried to slow his trajectory, the tightly grasped claw would pull back, shaking him, nails cutting deeper into his leg. In response, he would yell out profanities, trying to kick and fight and hold his ground. Ultimately though, he would always let go, proceeding to thump down the steel steps, yet another level closer to the alien nest.

Hudson was out of energy now. He stared at the dripping, metal ceiling resignedly, no more strength left in his muscles to keep fighting against the creature that held him. It had won.

As his delirious mind vaguely watched the grim scenery pass by, his subconscious took over, making the connection to a memory, transporting him elsewhere.

. . .

"You're not nervous, are you?" Louise asked from the seat across from him. Hudson had been staring out the window of the high-speed train headed to Wichita Falls, the urban landscape rushing by in a blur. He had been distracted by it, and he looked up at her in surprise.

"No. Why, do I look nervous?"

"Well yeah, a little bit," she responded with a loving smile. "You're fidgeting."

Hudson became aware that his knee had been bobbing up and down rapidly and he realized that, maybe he was slightly nervous.

"You've met my family before, my parents love you. And it's just dinner, you've got nothing to be worried about."

In four days, it would be the three-year anniversary of the day they met and began dating. In the bedside drawer in his room in Ian's house, was the ring he intended to propose to her with. For him, tonight was not just dinner with Louise's family, it was his opportunity to ask her parents for their blessing.

While Hudson had always imagined that he would someday get married, he had never given much thought to a proposal, or a wedding, or even what it would mean to spend his life with someone. Until he met Louise.

On his very first deployment away from her, a six-month mission, she was all he could think about. It was like his eyes had suddenly opened and for the first time, he could clearly see what he wanted in life.

At that time, they had only been dating for three months, but he knew that one day he would propose. They could have a small wedding, eventually a couple kids, move to a house with a yard. And when his ten-year contract with the Corps finally came to an end, he would invest in a storefront in the city and open a bar, and they could live off the profits. From then on, it was a dream that he held close, replayed in his mind when things got tough.

Those dreams seemed simple enough, not too much to hope for. Of course, if he couldn't have it all, the only thing in the world that he truly wanted was Louise, to have her by his side until the day he died. For three whole years, he thought about proposing, and with every year that passed, the length of his time away seemed to grow longer, his time with her shorter, sometimes only one or two months at home for every eight or nine months away.

While he was gone, Louise had quit bartending, finished up her education and experience hours, and had been recommended for a position with the City of Dallas as a community corrections officer, a role which she accepted and continued to excel at. But even with a busy career and so much time apart, Louise had stuck by him, saving every vacation and personal day of hers for the weeks when he finally came home, every reunion better than the last, every goodbye infinitely harder.

This time he was home for an unusually long two and a half months and after almost three years of waiting, he intended to propose to her. However, he wanted to go about it properly, so, at some point that night while they were at her parent's house for dinner, he would need to find a time to covertly ask for their blessing to marry their daughter, and somehow still keep it a secret from Louise.

Of course, there was _nothing_ to be worried about, just his entire life plan hung in the balance.

"Are your brothers going to be there?" Hudson asked Louise tentatively.

"Just Michael, I think," she said. "Simon has to work. Probably for the best, he hates your guts," she joked, her striking smile blooming into a grin.

He felt calmer now as he gazed at her. That smile, those dimples, the delicately braided hair, now cut shoulder-length, framing her beautiful face. He knew that everything would go fine later that night, because there was no question of how much he loved her. He knew that her parents would see that, if they didn't already.

Louise's grey-green eyes sparkled, looking back at him with love, her stunning dark skin looking so perfectly soft and kissable. He moved to the empty seat beside her, planting an easy kiss on her neck, on the delicate skin of her cheek, and then a lingering kiss on her enticingly full lips. She closed her eyes, kissing him back, seemingly lost in it until she broke away, remembering that they were on a train with other passengers.

"Will, people are looking."

"Oh sorry," said Hudson absently. "Here," he said, and he lifted her coat from off the seat to block them from view and she laughed earnestly, giving him a secret, amorous kiss behind the cover of the jacket.

.

Their three-year anniversary couldn't have been nicer. On the afternoon of May 21st, Hudson and Louise spent the day in the park, lying on a blanket in the sun with some cold beers, talking easily. In the late afternoon, Hudson prepared appetizers for them back at her apartment and surprised her with tickets to that night's hockey game, something that he knew Louise would love, perhaps even more than a ring. After a winning game, they ended the night with a late dinner and skipped their plan for drinks afterward in favour of going back to Louise's apartment, where they made love more than once.

And although Louise later described it as the perfect night, at no point in the evening did Hudson propose. It had never been his intention.

It wasn't until nearly two months later, July 14th, that he made his move. He had no real plans for a romantic outing or how it would happen, and perhaps for good reason, because the weather ended up being surprisingly stormy. A Monday night, nothing seemed noteworthy or special about the evening, except for the fact that Louise had taken most of that week off and they were planning to go for a hike along the Cedar Ridge Preserve the next day with some friends.

"I don't know if the weather is going to let up for tomorrow, we might have to postpone," said Louise with a frown.

"We can see tomorrow," said Hudson easily, but there was excitement growing in the pit of his stomach. The storm had picked up and from the living room window he could see lightning beginning to hit the Dallas skyline. He couldn't have planned it better if he tried.

Hudson turned out the light in the room. "Come here," he said to Louise, and in the dim light, he could see her frown turn to a smile as he pulled her onto the couch on top of him. "Look out there," he said pointing out at the city skyline. As if on cue, a bolt of lightning hit the Reunion Tower, the resounding crack and rumble of thunder following. "It's our own personal light show."

Louise grinned. "Incredible. And the best seats in the house too," she said snuggling into him.

Hudson smiled and waited. When the next strike of lightning hit, Louise stared out the window, mesmerized, and when she looked back at him to see his reaction, he was holding a ring.

Louise appeared stunned for a moment and Hudson smiled. "I should be down on one knee right now, but I think this is better," he said holding her closely. Louise's hand was over her mouth in surprise, and he reached out and held her shaking hand in his and she stared at the delicate ring.

Hudson took a deep breath. "Lou, over three years ago, we met at a bar with a very fitting name—I think it must have been fate that we met there that night because the moment that I knew you existed, I felt like the most fortunate guy in the universe." He smiled as Louise's eyes filled with tears of joy. "I know the last three years haven't always been easy… me bein' away so much, but I know how right it feels when we're together… You may not know it, but today is actually our _ten-month _anniversary—it's been ten months today that we've actually been together as a couple, on the same planet. And it might not seem like a lot, but those ten months, Lou, have been the happiest moments of my life. You're the most amazing person I've ever met, I'm so proud of you and everything you've accomplished; how successful and strong you are. And I've never loved anyone the way I love you… Louise Beatrice Carlisle, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she said quickly, "Of course." She kissed him fervently, tears running down her face, but unable to keep from smiling. When she parted from him, she shook her head in disbelief, a hand on her flushed cheek as she looked down at the ring. "Oh my god, look at this."

The ring was intended to be a placeholder for the real thing. Knowing that Louise wasn't one to wear a lot of jewelry, he wanted to let her pick out something for herself. The ring he gave to her now was made in the mechanical shop of the Sulaco, where he had heated and shaped a small piece of platinum into a delicate band, simple and thin and free of detail other than the front of the ring, which he had curved to a chevron point.

"So, that ain't the real ring, honey bee," said Hudson reassuringly, "I just made that so I could have something to give you. I want you to pick out something you'll really like."

"But I like this," she said with sincerity. "Will, you made this? It's absolutely beautiful, I love it," she exclaimed. "I love you." She kissed him again and laid her head on his chest, a permanent smile on her face, and said thoughtfully, "Ten months together."

Hudson grinned, his fingers entwined in the silky braids of her hair. "I was going to propose at a year, but that would have meant waiting until the next time I came home… I just couldn't wait eight more months for our twelve-month anniversary." She laughed at that, and Hudson gave a long sigh as he stared at her lovingly. In the back of his mind was the nagging reminder that he would have to leave again soon for another eight months away from her, but he pushed the thought aside. Tonight was for happy thoughts only. "I can't believe I'm going to get to marry you."

As the lightning lit up the room and thunder crashed outside, Hudson held Louise in his arms and he had never felt happier.

.

The early August deployment that followed was their hardest goodbye yet. Standing outside the entrance to the airbase, Hudson held her in a long hug, her warm tears soaking into the fabric of his uniform. He kissed her goodbye and turned to leave, but as he walked away from her, something inside him told him to look back.

She stood gazing back at him, her eyes red and her face a bit puffy from crying. Her tattooed arms were crossed, with one hand on her tearful face, the platinum engagement band that he had made for her visible on her slender finger.

Without thinking, he doubled back for one more kiss, one long, final embrace.

.

Hudson woke up from twenty days in cryo, his head feeling like the morning after an entire bottle of bourbon. As usual, Apone was the first one up and he had already begun to walk down the line of cryopods, rousing the crew awake with his usual banter.

"Time to wake up, sleeping beauties, we got a full day ahead of us," came the sergeant's voice, phonetics skewed by the cigar between his teeth. "Look alive, Drake! More alive than that… better. Come on folks, smile! Don't you know where we are?"

They were now in the constellation Scorpius, heading to the exoplanet Gliese 667 Cc, where they were being brought in on a reconnaissance mission to gain intel on an increasingly problematic group of bandits known for appropriating planetary resources.

One of the original exoplanets to be terraformed, Gliese 667 Cc was regarded as a success story in colonization: populous, abundant in natural resources, and known for its flourishing, tropical climate. So, it was no wonder that when Hudson got up from his cryopod, there seemed to be an uncommon stir of enthusiasm among the crew. Barefoot, he padded over with the rest of the crew to dress at their lockers.

"Ready to do the easiest eight months of your life?" Frost asked Hudson as he passed.

"Yeah, man," replied Hudson, slapping the palm of Frost's hand. "Going to be a change being somewhere that's not cold and bug-infested."

"You guys are crazy," said Vasquez beside them. "Recon? This mission will be a complete bore, probably won't even get to shoot anything."

"I'm with Vaz," agreed Drake, hitting her appreciatively on the arm.

"That's a surprise," said Hicks under his breath and Hudson chuckled. Drake didn't seem to hear him.

Hudson had finished dressing by the time Apone came up beside him.

"I'd like a word with you, Hudson," he said, looking serious.

Hudson frowned indignantly. "What'd I do? I've barely been defrosted for five minutes, Sarge." But another look from Apone told him that he shouldn't push his luck and he begrudgingly shut his locker and followed the sergeant.

Apone led him into his small office and took a seat behind the desk.

"To what do I owe the honour, sir?" Hudson said, still standing at the door.

"Hudson, sit down. I've got something I need to tell you."

Hudson sat down slowly, feeling his palms start to sweat as he noted the grave look on Apone's face. Something bad was coming.

"I just picked up a transmission from Gateway Station that came for you a week into our cryo cycle. It was from Mitch and Valerie Carlisle. They were trying to reach you with the news that their daughter—Louise—was admitted to the hospital with a heart condition.

Hudson felt the blood drain from his face. He stood, instinctively looking towards the door, momentarily thinking that he could just walk right out and back to her Dallas apartment, to whatever hospital she was at. But of course, he couldn't. He was over twenty light-years from Earth.

"Hudson," Apone was trying to get his attention, but his voice was patient and Hudson turned on the spot and looked back at the sergeant warily. "Hudson, I hate to have to tell you this," said Apone and Hudson's pace quickened. "Louise died of heart failure two days after she was admitted."

He stared at Apone, having trouble registering the words in his mind, his brain was misfiring. All at once, he felt like he was underwater and he watched as Apone was talking, his lips moving, his hands gesturing, but Hudson couldn't make out any of the words.

"That can't be right, Sir." Hudson said softly, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but it can't be."

Apone's eyes went to the floor. When he looked back at Hudson, there was a strange, sympathetic expression on the Sergeant's face that Hudson had never seen before. That was when he knew it was the truth, and reality hit like a ton of bricks.

Hudson pressed his fingertips to his forehead as a checkerboard of white and black spots began to appear in front of his eyes. His legs feeling like they might give out, he caught the back of the chair to steady himself, leaning over until his vision came back.

Suddenly, Apone was at his side and took him by the arm, pushing him into the chair and Hudson sat, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, shaking his head in disbelief. Apone's hand was on his shoulder and a silence passed between them.

"What do I do?" asked Hudson slowly and he looked up at Apone. Truthfully, he had no idea. He needed someone to tell him.

"First of all, you're gonna breathe," said the sergeant, unfazed by the ambiguity of the question. "And then you keep breathing. You go to your quarters, take a few days to get your head straight… Then, you rejoin the crew and get back to work. Because that's all you can do."

.

Hudson left Apone's office feeling dazed and he knew he was in shock. Most of the crew had already gone to the mess hall for breakfast and he was relieved he didn't have to walk past everyone. He felt physically sick and even the thought of food was nauseating, so he went directly to the sleeping quarters.

The rooms aboard the Sulaco were small and stark, symmetrically arranged to hold four bunks, two desks with chairs, and a small wardrobe on either side of the room for their limited amount of clothing and belongings the marines were allotted. On larger-scale missions, they each would have been housed with two, three or even four to a room, but with reconnaissance assignments like this one, the smaller skeleton crew meant that everyone could have a room to themselves. Right now, that suited him just fine.

But as he approached the door of his assigned quarters, Vasquez passed him in the hallway.

"What happened to you?" she asked abruptly, looking up at his face. Hudson felt dismayed by the fact she could tell so easily that something was amiss with him.

"Nothin'," he lied. "Just not feelin' the greatest. Gonna lie down for a bit."

He expected Vasquez to jump on the opportunity to pass a snide comment about him being weak, needing to toughen up, but instead she gave a grunt of understanding and watched him with curiosity. "Well you look like shit. You want me to bring you back something to eat?"

Hudson was a bit caught off guard by her thoughtful offer. She had tried to disguise it by pairing it with an insult, her way of trying to offer some compassion without it being noticed.

"No, thanks Vaz."

"Ok," she said easily, but by her expression, he knew she could tell something was wrong.

"I'll see ya," he said and disappeared into his room.

.

It took him a while to gather the courage to check his transmissions. He sat at his desk, looking at his tablet, an indicator showing that he had four video messages waiting to be viewed.

He drew in a deep breath and began to open the messages, beginning with the most recent.

_Wed, Aug 13, 2177, 18:05 - From Sender: 18172342377 - ExtermiNationIan_

"Hey man," said his best friend, Ian, his face coming in to focus on the screen. He looked worried and his voice was morose. "I'm sure you've found out by now… And I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Louise was an incredible person, and I can't imagine what you must be going through right now… Uh, I don't imagine that they'll turn that ship around to get you home for the funeral, so I wanted you to know that I'll be there—me and Kerri and Trey and Asha, we'll be there at the funeral, standing in for you. And um… I'm even going to say a few words on your behalf."

Hudson felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of gratitude for his friend. Of all the ways Ian had been there for him over the years, this was probably the most profound. Ian's eyes looked red and he sniffed but then gave a bitter laugh. "Don't worry, I'll keep it short and I won't ramble or say anything you wouldn't say."

The sound of a small voice could be heard off screen and Ian looked away for a moment, his voice inaudible and he spoke to someone off camera. Then he leaned out of view for a second and retuned with his two-year old daughter, Avery, in his arms. The girl sat on his lap, her eyes focused on the screen inquisitively. At the sight of her, Hudson smiled despite everything else he was feeling.

"Really, I just wanted to let you know that we're all thinking about you man, and whenever you get back, you'll have a room at our place and friends here waiting for you. Okay… Take care of yourself, brother."

_Tues, Aug 12, 2177, 14:31 - From Sender: 19409833132 – Valerie&MitchCarlisle_

Louise's mother, Valerie, sat at the kitchen table of their home in Wichita Falls. She looked grief-stricken; her usual high-spirited jubilance replaced with exhaustion. In the background, Michael, Louise's brother, stood at the kitchen sink, staring blankly out the kitchen window.

"Will," she began softly. "I'm not sure what messages you've received yet. We left a couple with the Company thinking someone might be able to reach you… Will, honey, Lou's conditioned worsened… our darling girl passed away early this morning." She paused and tears streamed down her face. "We were there with her and it seemed like she went peacefully. The doctors said she wasn't in any pain," her voice broke and Hudson felt tears come to his own eyes. Along with the sadness he felt was guilt; she shouldn't have had to send this message to him, he should have been there.

"I still can't quite believe that it's true… how fast it all happened… And I know this will all be a shock for you too, so I want you to know that you can message us anytime and we can keep in touch. As far as I'm concerned, you will always be a part of the family. Louise would have wanted that. I know she's here with us… And if her spirit ever does leave this earth, it will be to watch over you while you're out there."

_Sun, Aug 10, 2177, 11:06 - From Sender: 19409833132 – Valerie&MitchCarlisle_

Louise's parents sat side by side, both barely fitting on the screen, stress apparent on both of their faces.

Mitch spoke first, "Uh, hi there, Will. I'm sorry in advance for this message, but Val and I wanted to make sure you were kept in the loop with all that's been happening. Uh…" Mitch trailed off, trying to gather his thoughts.

"Honey, Louise was admitted into the hospital last night," said Valerie, her words careful and pained. "She's been diagnosed with a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. For a while, her heart stopped, but they were able to bring her back. We're here with her now… We weren't sure of your schedule there, whether you've left the station yet, so we wanted to let you know just in case coming home was an option for you… because now would be the time." Her eyes filled with tears and then suddenly she was looking up. "Oh, Mitch," she said, startled by something.

Then there was a scuffle as the screen showed a jumbled pan in all directions before the view was just of a hospital room ceiling.

After over a minute of mumbled talking in the background, Mitch could be seen picking up the device that was still recording, and he came into view. "Sorry 'bout that, Will. Someone here wants to say hello to you."

The screen went to Louise, she was lying in the hospital bed, looking frail and he could tell that she had just woken up. Hudson's heart could barely handle the sight of it. Tears dropped down his face, but he continued to watch the transmission.

"Hi Will," said Louise in a voice that was hardly there, but she had a smile on her face. "Don't worry, everything will be fine." Her words were only just coherent, and he could tell she was heavily drugged. "I love you."

_Wed, Aug 6, 2177, 12:33 - From Sender: 14692449488 – LouiseBCarlisle_

"Hey Will," she said with her usual stunning smile. "I know it's been less than a week since you left and you're still probably very frozen at the moment, but I've just really been missing you, so I thought sending you a message would help. I've been thinking a lot about the wedding… What would you think about renting out _Fate and Fortune_ and having the reception there? We could keep it to just a small group of people… If you think about it, it's actually an amazing venue if you can get past the stale beer smell. We could scrub the place down first." She shrugged. "I just thought it would be nice because that's where we met. Hey, maybe we could have our first dance in that spot where that guy nearly knocked your lights out." She grinned at the memory and for a moment, Hudson was so enraptured by her, that for a few seconds, he completely forgot that he wasn't sitting right across from her; that he never would again.

"Anyway, message me back when you get this and tell me what you think... I know you're still in cryosleep so that's not going to be for a while… Oh man, I miss you so much already, I can't believe it hasn't even been a week, how am I going to get through eight months without you? I love you, Will. I can't wait to marry you."

Hudson paused it—her sweet smile and dimples, those sincere, stunning eyes, captured in a single frame. For a long while, he just sat at the desk and stared at the paused image of her, his shock passing, the enormity of it starting to set in. Finally, he disconnected the tablet from its port and moved to the bed, collapsing on the bottom bunk, the image of her face now blurred through tears. There, he sobbed until he could barely breathe.

.

Apone had given him a few days of leave, and as far as Hudson knew, the others just thought he was sick, and he wanted to keep it that way. After almost two full days spent in the room, he had barely gotten up from the bed. He was lying on top of the covers, lost in thought when there was a knock on the door.

"Hudson, are you awake?" Came a voice from behind the door. Corporal Dietrich. She had only joined the battalion as a field medic about a year earlier, so their interactions with one another had been limited to basic conversations. He looked at the door, not wanting to respond, but he did.

"Come in."

The door opened and she approached the bunk cautiously.

"Yeah Dietrich," he said bleakly, sitting up a bit to look at her.

"Vasquez said you were sick. I just thought I'd check in and see if I could do anything to help you get back on your feet.

"Right," Hudson said, unsure how to communicate to her that he wasn't sick, that it was grief he was feeling. He sat up fully and she sat down beside him, studying him intently.

It was clear that she was waiting for him to say something more, and when he didn't, she asked, "What do you feel like, what symptoms have you been having?"

Hudson almost found humour in the situation. "Oh," he said, "I guess, tiredness, insomnia, generally not giving a fuck, things like that."

She frowned and lightly pulled him towards her so she could press her hand to his forehead. It surprised him a bit and he sat still watching her as she felt his temperature. After a few seconds, she looked into his eyes and removed her hand.

"Apone doesn't just give out sick days on a whim. Want to tell me what's really going on?"

Hudson stared at the ground wearily. "Look, Dietrich…" he began.

"Bad news from home?" she questioned astutely.

Hudson looked up at her. He was about to say, 'no', but the words caught in his throat. After a pause, he knew that too much time had passed to provide a convincing denial, and he heard himself saying, "My girlfriend— _fiancé_, Louise." And then he gathered the strength to add, "She died while we were in cryo. I found out yesterday morning."

It was the first time he had said the words aloud, and that made things real. His stomach gave a reactionary lurch, the recently familiar feeling of sorrow building up in his chest, but he felt too exhausted to show any outward emotion. Instead, he just sat there, stewing in grief, the pain of the truth weighing heavily upon his mind and his heart.

Dietrich's eyes widened. She clearly hadn't expected him to say that. She was silent and then she shook her head, "Hudson, I'm so sorry."

"Only Apone knows," was the only response he could manage.

Dietrich studied him, trying to read his body language. After a moment, she put her hand on his shoulder empathetically, and when words seemed to fail her, she pulled him into a hug.

Hudson felt rigid in her embrace at first, but when she didn't pull away, he slowly leaned into her and hugged her back. The feeling of someone caring did provide him with some comfort.

"You can talk to me, okay?" she said, her cheek against his shoulder. Eventually, she pulled away and looked at him compassionately. "I know we're not the best of friends or anything, but I'm here if you want to talk about it. Anytime, alright?"

Hudson nodded somberly.

"If the others ask, I'll say you have a fever, it might buy you a couple more days," said Dietrich.

.

But the next morning, Hudson woke early, feeling restless and agitated. Deciding he couldn't spend another second in the room, he dressed and headed for the gym, fitting in a workout, a shower and a quick breakfast before the rest of the crew got up.

He was at his locker and almost completely dressed in his combat attire as slowly, the squad began to filter into the room to prepare for their recon drop at 0900 hours.

"Well, look who decided to join us today," said Frost and he gave Hudson a slap on the back. "How ya feelin', man?"

"Think you'll wanna keep your distance buddy, that shit was rough," he replied, feeling slightly relieved at how easily the words came out of his mouth. He didn't feel ready to let everyone know what had really happened, maybe he never would be. But it felt slightly encouraging to think that, maybe it wouldn't be so hard to pretend that everything was fine. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Dietrich was watching him.

Apone entered and provided a quick briefing on the day's itinerary and their progress to that point. He discussed the known activities of potential piracy suspects on the colonized exoplanet, asking select members of the team to report the findings from their recon work the day before. Hudson struggled to keep up, his mind bleary and unfocused.

When the briefing came to an end and Apone left the room, the crew broke into casual conversation at their lockers, still half an hour remaining before they made the drop to the surface of Gliese 667 Cc.

Tidally locked to its star, the exoplanet experienced permanent daylight on one side, but with the use of a shading satellite, the colony manufactured relative darkness for 10 of every 24 hours to simulate a day on earth for its colonists. After today's drop, they would be switching to a primarily nighttime, shift work schedule.

"I heard the nightclubs in the Darkside are outta control," said Drake. "There's no concept of time out there so the night just keeps going."

"I'm down," agreed Ferro. "This colony knows where it's at. It's like the only outpost where I've ever seen anyone with a tan. Did you see those guys at the airbase when we landed yesterday? Hot!"

"Yeah, but you know that _those_ guys won't be hanging out at a club in the Darkside, right?" said Spunkmeyer eyeing up Ferro and the two started arguing.

"We get one night off in ten days and you guys actually want to go to the worst part of the planet," countered Karim, the newest member of the crew, clearly already unafraid to voice his opinion. A calendar hung in his locker; the two completed days of the mission already crossed out in red. He still had a long way to go.

As the group erupted into talk about their eventual night off, Frost turned to Hudson.

"What do you think, man? Would Louise mind if you went to a seedy club in the Darkside?"

Hudson felt raw at the mention of her name. Frost was also in a relationship, and for the length of time the two had been friends, they had always shared that in common. He and Frost had grown close, having once roomed together for the better part of an eight-month mission. Hudson assumed he would have to reveal at least some of the news to him eventually, so he replied, "Nah, man. We're actually not together anymore."

Frost looked surprised. "Oh shit," he said.

Beside them, Hicks had overheard and looked over at Hudson. "Sorry to hear that. I thought you two were the real deal."

"Yeah, so did I," Hudson replied, and his face felt a bit flushed as he realized everyone was now tuning in to their conversation. It occurred to him suddenly that in an alternate universe, one where Louise hadn't died, he might have been sharing news of his engagement now instead of this.

"I guess some things don't always work out the way you plan," he finished. His voice wavered and he tried to mask it by coughing deliberately, pointing to his throat, feigning annoyance at a cough he didn't have.

"What are you going to do about that constant reminder?" laughed Crowe, pointing at Louise's name on his chest plate. "Bet you regret writing that in such big letters."

"Yeah, keeping an ex's name on your gear, that shit is bad luck," chimed in Vasquez. "You should cross that bitch's name out." From Karim's locker, she grabbed the red marker he had been using to cross out the days on the calendar. The others laughed as Vasquez tossed the marker in Hudson's direction.

With lightening reflexes, Dietrich grabbed it out of the air before it could reach Hudson "You guys should probably mind your own fucking business," she snapped. Dietrich tossed the marker back and Vasquez batted it to the floor in irritation.

Vasquez stared Dietrich down "What crawled up your ass, Dietrich?"

"I'm just saying, did anyone ask your opinion? No. So clearly it's none of your business."

"Dietrich—" Hudson said blankly, hoping she would back down. While he felt flattered that she was standing up for him, he also felt she was coming close to revealing too much of what he had been hoping to keep hidden.

For the briefest of moments, Vasquez looked at Hudson and he could tell that she was wondering why Dietrich was trying to protect him, what she had to gain. She stepped closer to Dietrich, her voice low and foreboding. "You sure you want to start something, _Cynthia_?" The tension in the room was palpable, until Apone entered again.

"What the hell is wrong with you folks!" yelled an unimpressed Apone. "I leave here for two minutes and you children turn the damn locker room into Lord-of-the-fucking-Flies! Get into formation before I give you kids something to cry about!"

.

After ten hours of reconnaissance on Gliese 667 Cc, Hudson felt drained. The heat was unrelenting, even in the shade and he felt irritated, itchy and sweating from the heat. Working in partners, as usual he had been paired with Vasquez. Normally, the two would have got along well, competitively trying to outdo the work of the other teams, a good amount of productive banter and fist-bumps as they worked. But for the entire shift, Hudson struggled to concentrate, the grief inside of him like a boulder resting on his heart.

He wasn't angry at Vasquez for her earlier comments. He knew she didn't realize Louise was dead, that she just thought that Louise had broken it off with him, and that most of the squad had assumed that from the limited information he had chosen to share. But even though he didn't fault her for saying what she did, he still found it difficult to look her in the eye.

"What's with you, Hudson?" Vasquez finally asked him, when a particularly long silence between them seemed to put her on edge. "You still sick?"

"Maybe, man," he replied disinterestedly. But when he finally looked back at her, he noted that an air of vulnerability had fallen over her. He watched her, wondering if she was ever going to say what was on her mind.

"Look, if I crossed a line earlier with what I said…" she began, looking uncomfortable.

"It's fine," he said quickly, before she could apologize. Then he promptly turned back to their work, reminding himself to compartmentalize, save his inventory of personal baggage for a time when he was off duty. "I'm not getting much on this frequency," he had said to her, entering back into his role of combat technician, attempting to focus on the task at hand. "Here, let me adjust your earpiece, we might have better luck."

.

Back on the Sulaco, with the shift finally over, he sat in silence by his locker, still half dressed in his combat attire. Everyone else had changed and gone to dinner, but Hudson remained on the bench in the locker room, exhausted. In his hands, he held the chest plate of his armour, staring down at Louise's name written boldly in white. He drew his knife from his holster as he considered scratching off the letters. He studied the sharp blade for a moment, reflecting on the damage it could do.

"Rough day at the office?" He heard Dietrich say. He looked up to see her standing against the lockers. She was looking at his hand with the knife, at the armour he held, and Hudson wondered how much she could read into his train of thought.

Hudson set down the knife and looked down at the chest plate, the name of his would-have-been wife. "I mean, they're fuckin' right, aren't they?" he said to her, his eyes travelling back to the white letters. "I can't keep her name on here like this."

Dietrich sat beside him on the bench, watching him attentively. Although she was known to have a temper at times, for the most part, she had a calm, meditative way about her that made him feel like he could talk to her. Hudson suspected that it was due to her training in various fields of medicine, but she seemed to know how to approach difficult feelings. Dietrich waited in silence, leaving space for him to continue talking, and after a moment, he did.

"It was supposed to be… a reminder of what I was living and fighting for. Now what is it all for? What do I do now every time I look down and see what I've lost?" Hudson's voice wavered again, but this time he didn't attempt to hide it.

"Whether you take her name off or not, it's not going to make a difference. Because the memory of someone is not something you can just erase," said Dietrich. "Maybe instead of thinking about removing it, you should think about adding to it."

"What do you mean? Adding what?" Hudson looked up at her.

"Like some words or a symbol of what she meant and what her memory represents." She paused and looked back at him and there was sympathy in her eyes. "I know you weren't able to be at her funeral," she said slowly, and Hudson knew she was trying to be careful in selecting her words. "But, taking a moment to do something in memory of her might help give you some closure."

Then he watched her hand go to the knife, and she placed it in his hand, poised it over the battered piece of armour, indicating that he should scribe something into it.

But even after Dietrich took her hand away, Hudson hesitated at length, uncertain of what words or message he could add that would do justice to the way he felt about Louise, what her life meant to him and how devastating her death had been, every word in his vocabulary too trite, every symbol that came to mind unworthy of placement next to her name. He shook his head in doubt.

"You know, before I came here, I was a field medic on an international peacekeeping mission," began Dietrich. "We were deployed to a small community in Japan, where an accidental airstrike landed in the community and took out a hospital." Her face went a bit pale as she spoke, and he knew she was reliving the horror of what she was describing.

"There were so many people affected, so many families… that we had to set up barricades, fence the perimeter to keep people from coming in and searching for their loved ones. It took us days to clear the wreckage, assist the injured, record the casualties. But I remember at one point just looking up at the barricade… and there was this red string hanging off the fence. Someone had tied it on there in memory of someone they had lost. Every time we looked back, there were more of these red strings until all of a sudden, the fence was almost completely covered in red—ribbons and strings, all knotted in these intricate medallions. They said the knots were meant to symbolize eternity, hope, things like that."

Hudson considered her story for a moment, then he handed the knife to her. "Do you remember what they looked like?" and he held the chest plate towards her

Dietrich raised her eyebrows. "You would trust me to draw that on here?"

Hudson gave a small shrug and watched her. She took the armour from him and then the knife and carefully she began scribing the symbol under the name, scratching away the green camo paint so that the outline was visible in white. In a couple minutes, she had etched the perfect shape of a simple Japanese love knot, hanging off the 'o' in Louise.

Hudson nodded, impressed and she passed it back to him. Then, suddenly noticing something, Dietrich reached down and picked up an object off the floor—the red marker Vasquez had thrown earlier. "Maybe there's a use for this after all," she said with a small laugh, offering it to Hudson. He accepted it from her and carefully, he began tracing the white etched shape, adding colour, and the symbol came to life.

"Looks sweet," he said, happy with the result. "Thanks, Dee." He put his arm around Dietrich's back and squeezed her shoulder.

Dietrich smiled, and her face looked a bit flushed. "Of course."

.

The following day, when they were suiting up in their combat gear, Hudson donned his chest plate. Looking down at the red knot symbol, he thought of Louise. He still felt broken, plagued with sadness and a never-ending heartache. He knew that wasn't going to change anytime soon, that he still had a long way to go before he would be okay. But even in his grief, he didn't regret a single second that he spent loving her. As painful as it was, his memory of her would keep him going.

"Looking good," Dietrich said to him in passing and Hudson managed a smirk. He thought he had been the only one to hear her comment, until he looked up and saw Vasquez watching him from a few lockers over.

Vasquez's dark eyes glanced at Dietrich, but then went to the red knot on Hudson's chest. She looked up at his face, and they made eye contact briefly, her mouth slightly open, her expression difficult to read. After a second, her lips came together and she looked away.

She never asked him about it, and neither did the rest of the crew.

. . .

A siren sounded, steadily growing louder. Then an automated voice, "Attention, emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have twenty minutes to reach minimum safe distance."

Hudson now floated in a strange place between delirium and consciousness. He was vaguely aware of the words he was hearing. _Attention. Evacuate. Emergency_. He couldn't see, his eyes were closed, too weak to open. But he began to remember where he was—not aboard the Sulaco or on Earth or Gliese 667 Cc, but on LV-426, being transported to a nest of aliens.

She was above him then, looking down at him. He could see her bright, beautiful face, shining like a star overtop of him. Light eyes intently watching him, loving but worried, extending a strong tattooed arm out to him. He reached for her, and her hand was in his, but he couldn't feel it.

"What are you doing, Will?" she asked. "I know you and you don't just give up."

"Maybe you never really knew the real me," he said back to her sadly.

"No. I know you. I know the Will Hudson who jumps into a bar fight without thinking. The one who fights to stay alive year after year so he can make it back to Earth and live the life he's always wanted. I know you can make it, just keep fighting."

"I'm done, I can't."

"You're not a coward, Will. You're better than that. You just have to open your eyes," she said, and suddenly the image of her grew fuzzy and he felt her slipping away. He tried to concentrate on her face, remember what she looked like so that he could hold onto her for a few more seconds, but she was gone, only her voice echoing, "open your eyes."

Hudson's eyes shot open, his surroundings quickly coming into focus, his heart abruptly pounding with anxiety at the sudden hit of reality.

He recognized where he was, dark alien matter covered the surfaces around him, slimy and hardened secretions, skin-like coatings over everything, serving some unknown purpose. Gross fucking alien décor. Whatever it was, Hudson could identify it as the entry to the nest.

A movement beside him caught his eye, another alien's scuttling gait, carrying something under its arm, an object out of place. Blonde hair and overalls.

He could barely believe it, but he was staring at Newt. Those motherfuckers had gotten a hold of Newt.

Anger and adrenaline coursed through his veins, his heart racing, his lungs inflating.

"Let go of her you bastard! You sick motherfucker!" Hudson yelled at the alien form passing beside him. He struggled vigorously against the claw attached to his leg. "Newt! Newt! Can you hear me, kid?"

His yells were unacknowledged. Newt appeared to be unconscious, her hair was wet and her clothes soaked through. He wondered how she had gotten there, whether the others were dead or captured too.

He had to help her. He had no idea how, all he knew was that he had to do something.


	4. Make or Break

"_Dónde estoy_?"

Vasquez heard her own voice, raspy and barely audible in the noisy room. Around her, people spoke with tense voices, machines clamoured and beeped, and in the distance an ambulance siren could be heard. An air conditioner rattled somewhere, and Vasquez thought she could feel the air from it. She was sweating and shivering all at once and the pain in her side was intense, feeling as though her stomach had been ripped open and then pulled back together and closed too tight.

Then there was the sound of her mother's voice. Vasquez struggled to open her heavy eyes.

"_Madre_?"

"_Mija_?" came her mother's voice from behind her.

Vasquez turned to try to see her mother, her stomach raging in pain as she moved. She had barely been able to reposition herself when she became caught on something. She looked down at her hand and there was a set of metal handcuffs securing her left wrist to the right guardrail of the hospital bed she was in. She stared at the handcuffs in confusion and shook them, seeing if they were actually keeping her in place, wondering why they had been attached in such a way that prevented her from turning over or even lying on her back.

Suddenly, there was a hand on her shoulder and she craned her neck to see her mother, Elena, appearing stressed. "_Donde esta Carmen_?" asked her mother. Beside her there were others looking at Vasquez intently: someone who appeared to be a doctor and two Mexican Federal Police officers.

"Where is Carmen?" her mother repeated and Vasquez racked her brain trying to remember what had happened.

She recalled hiding with Carmen in the alley, giving her sister her passport and the money they had stolen. Making her promise to run if things turned bad. It must have.

"I don't know," Vasquez said, wincing as she tried to turn to see her mother better. Elena frowned at her, but didn't move to the other side of the bed to allow her daughter to see her more easily. "What's going on?" Vasquez asked apprehensively.

But the doctor spoke first, moving around so Vasquez could see her. "You came in with a gunshot wound to the stomach, which resulted in a ruptured kidney. Surgeons performed a partial nephrectomy yesterday to remove half of the kidney and repair some arterial damage."

"Very good, Doc, thanks," interrupted one of the officers, who was now standing at the foot of her hospital bed, "Hear that, kid? Good news: you're going to live. Bad news: that's going to be life behind bars if you don't start talking."

Vasquez stared back at him, his words triggering a sense of unease and mistrust. She pulled on the handcuffs again, testing whether there was any way to make a break for it. Suddenly, memories began to come back to her: a gun pointed at her face, then at Carmen. And then…

She looked back at the officer, recalling all of it.

"You want to admit what you did?" said the officer coarsely.

"You've been in a gang, _mija_?" interjected her mother angrily. "And you brought your sister into it. She was a good girl. They say you killed someone and now Carmen is missing! How are we supposed to come back from this? How am I going to pay for your medical bills?" Elena looked at her daughter in contempt.

All the details were flooding back to Vasquez's mind now. She remembered kneeling on the ground, promptly drawing her gun while Martina Diaz was distracted. Standing swiftly and pulling the trigger. She remembered being slightly shocked at the amount of blood and the extent of time it took Martina to fall to the ground. She remembered feeling surprised that she had been the cause of all of it.

Then, there had been the sound of two gunshots as one of Martina's companions raised his gun and ran at her in surprise. One shot had missed her completely but then she felt the burn of the second bullet as it impaled her side, burying itself in her stomach and she fell to her knees. She had been holding her stomach, trying to keep her own blood from spilling out when he jumped her, kicking the gun out of her hand, roughly tearing off her backpack and searching it.

"It's not here!"

The other teen held Vasquez to the ground with her foot. "Where's the cash, you bitch?!" she said as she searched Vasquez's clothes, ripping her shirt, checking for money that wasn't there.

"Fuck! Carmen must have taken it, where'd she go?" she yelled in frustration, scanning her surroundings.

Fearing that the girl might suddenly take off after Carmen, Vasquez lunged forward. Desperation outweighing pain, she tackled the girl at the knees, taking her down to the ground. Vasquez threw herself on the girl's back, hitting her head into the ground before the other teen stopped her, kicking Vasquez hard in the side where she had been shot.

Vasquez yelled out, falling onto her back in agony, and above her, a gun was pointed at her face. But then, there had been the sound of sirens, a saving grace as the gun was lowered and the two scattered. Vasquez just laid there motionless, unable to move.

As she held her hands over the gunshot wound, she knew that she had never been so badly hurt before, that it was very possible she was going to die.

But she did not feel afraid. All she felt was _hope_.

Even now in the hospital, as she stared at the two officers, she had no idea what was going to happen to her, but Carmen had not yet been found and that made her hopeful.

Vasquez remained silent as Elena stared at her and she felt herself grow smaller and more vulnerable under her mother's resentful gaze.

"I always told your father there was something different about you. You always brought trouble wherever you went," she said and her expression continued to harden with anger. "I wish you never came back here. We were fine before you came back."

Vasquez looked up at her mother, too dejected to cry or speak or plead her case. In many ways, she felt like she deserved her mother's anger and so she accepted it, quiet as Elena yelled at her and then left without saying goodbye.

Alone with the two officers, they watched her like a pair of greedy scavengers eyeing up an easy meal. Vasquez refused to look at them as they chided her. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of the only thing now that she had to hold on to: the fact that Carmen had not yet been found.

Maybe, just maybe, her sister had gotten away, made it across the border, somewhere far away from this place.

. . .

_Dónde estoy? _The thought came into her head again now. As her consciousness returned, pain ignited in her legs, a reminder of where she was: LV-426 in 2179. There was a ringing in her ears, noises of residual debris falling and echoing through the enclosed space. Everything was dark, the air thin, smelling of sulfur, scorched metal, blood.

She thought of Gorman sadly; wondered why he had insisted on saving her life moments ago, why she had allowed him to sacrifice himself so she could escape.

She gasped for air in the darkness, the remorse of Gorman's death suddenly weighing so heavily upon her that she was uncertain whether it was the chemical air or her own guilt preventing her from being able to take a full breath.

Behind her, she saw a dim red light and she shimmied backward towards it, down through the fallen duct. When her feet reached the floor, she gingerly crawled back through the opening until she was out. Then she laid on the cold floor, taking in deep breaths of air from the open space.

So much death seemed to follow her that lately she wondered if she herself was a bad omen, promising death and destruction to anyone that got close to her. Her mother's words came to mind, _'you always brought trouble wherever you went.'_

A flash of recollection brought her back to the last moment she shared with her father, his shocked eyes and final breaths as blood gurgled in his lungs, and then the silence that followed, her head falling on his chest and tears flowing. She could not recall ever crying since that day.

Her father had been the first—the beginning of the blood that was on her hands. He had just been trying to provide her with the opportunity for a better life, moving her to Louisiana to protect her. He wouldn't have been killed if it wasn't for that.

Now, Scott Gorman had been added to the list as the most recent casualty weighing on her conscience, inexplicably giving his life so she could have a fighting chance.

She didn't feel like she deserved either sacrifice, however she knew that she needed to stay alive so that they hadn't been for nothing.

The duct she had crawled through had led her into a laboratory of some kind and she looked around idly at the large space she was now in, red with the same emergency light that lit the rest of the complex.

Where the duct had broken away and fallen from the ceiling, two openings close to the ceiling now remained, and Vasquez watched them intently, half expecting a xenomorph to clamber out at any moment. But things seemed quiet, and for now it seemed she was safe in the room.

She scanned the room quickly for things that might be able to help her. While she knew that a stock of guns was too much to hope for, she quickly spotted a white case attached to the wall, marked with a red cross. She crawled over to it and knelt up higher so she could pull it off the wall.

Gritting her teeth, Vasquez looked down at her legs, peeling back what remained of her pants, below the knee, getting the first look at the damage. The left leg looked like it had severe burns, but the right was worse.

Opening the first aid kit, she pulled out a roll of gauze and wrapped it around her right leg first, tightly binding it to stop the bleeding. Even the slightest contact was excruciating and she breathed hard through clenched teeth as her mind made the nauseating comparison to wrapping an eviscerated piece of raw meat.

When she was done, Vasquez pocketed some extra rolls of gauze and tossed aside the first aid kit, crawling across the room towards a storage cabinet. Throwing the doors open, she scanned the contents, primarily the one side which held an array of glass bottles filled with chemicals.

She held onto the cabinet door to pull herself up so she could see the items on the shelves, twisting several glass bottles to read the labels. She identified and pulled out one filled with a white powder. The bottle was labelled with several different warnings expressing caution, and the chemical formula NH4NO3.

Vasquez took two 250ml bottles of ammonium nitrate from the shelves, located a canister of lighter fluid and poured a generous amount into each bottle of chemical powder before capping and sliding them into the pockets of her pants. It wasn't much, but there was a chance it could come in handy.

Holding onto the wall for support, Vasquez limped along the perimeter of the room. When she made it to the door, she opened it a crack to peer outside. Perceiving no signs of immediate danger, she exited the room as silently as she could manage.

. . .

The death of Martina Diaz hadn't always weighed on her conscience. The moment she had pulled the trigger, she knew that the event would remain with her for the rest of her life, however, she never truly thought that she would regret it. It wasn't until months later, after she was released from the hospital in Juarez and extradited back to the United States to stand before a judge, that she began to feel remorse for her crime.

She met frequently with the public defender appointed to her case by the court, her lawyer, Etta Asante. From the start, Etta was hardworking and treated Vasquez with respect, guiding her through the complicated and intimidating legal process.

Vasquez could recall Etta's voice at their first meeting, sympathetic but also impressively professional: "You were acting in defence, protecting your sister. They had you cornered, Miss Vasquez—may I call you Jen?—you feared for your lives, you had no other choice. I think we can get this down from second-degree to manslaughter. But even if we take the plea, you could be looking at a minimum of eight to ten years, beginning in juvenile detention."

Etta Asante was stern but compassionate, young—maybe only ten years older than Vasquez—but highly capable. She seemed trustworthy and Vasquez did not take that for granted, painfully aware that, at that moment, she had no one else in her life that she could count on.

She remembered how Ms. Asante sat with her as she prepared her closing statement, suggesting phrasing that would appeal to the judge.

"You're a smart girl, Jen," she had said, "And that's a well-written statement that you prepared, but let me make a suggestion: what the judge will be looking for is _remorse_. We know that you felt that you were left with no choice, but the judge will want to see that you regret your actions."

"But I don't," said Vasquez defiantly. "I did it to protect Carmen, I would do it again tomorrow if I had to."

"What I want you to do is spend some time tonight really thinking about what you want to say," Etta had said. "A seventeen year-old girl will now never get the opportunity to choose her own path in life, will never have the choice to turn her life around or repent for her own crimes."

At first, Vasquez had bristled at the comment, not caring to acknowledge the words. But as she sat in her holding cell that night, she visualized Martina's face for the first time outside of her own frame of reference: not as a gang leader or a threat to Carmen, but as a young girl around her age, in the same bad neighbourhood and living situation that she had been born into. Martina was now dead because of her. She did regret it. She wished she could take it back.

On paper, she wrote exactly that and the following day when she met with Etta, she felt as if any confidence or bravado she might have had in the past weeks had been stripped away. She felt raw and vulnerable as she shared her new statement with her lawyer, her voice quietly wavering. When she was finished, Etta hugged her and told her that she was proud of her, that everything would eventually be okay.

Etta had been right about the verdict at least: she received a sentence that was considered lenient: a voluntary manslaughter conviction, with possibility of parole after eight years.

Vasquez remembered the day she entered the Ellis Gate Juvenile Correctional Facility in Baton Rouge and stood in a lineup with at least a dozen other youth, grimly waiting their turn to be processed and brought into the prison.

In front of Vasquez, a sudden flurry of activity occurred as a girl began pushing the young man in front of her, and the two fell out of line, quickly engaging in a full-fledged fist fight. Guards were on them immediately, pushing them both forcefully against the wall. And when the girl struggled and demanded to speak to her lawyer, the guard swiftly pulled out a canister of mace from his belt and used it on her.

The visual was shocking as the young girl screamed and rubbed her eyes, the two guards laughing and making comments about obeying authority. For Vasquez, the event set the tone for what to expect from the establishment and she quickly learned that nothing would be tolerated. If she wanted to survive, she would have to lay low and follow directions. Then, she would just need to do that for at least the next eight years.

Cells were small and solitary, a slit of window in the concrete overlooking the bleak courtyard, a small viewing pane in the door so the guards could monitor them at any time. Vasquez quickly fell into a depression, feeling ashamed and alone. Even during their regimented schooling, mealtime and communal activities, she chose to sit by herself, not wanting to engage with others. Around her, most of the other new detainees had aligned with other groups and individuals. On her own, Vasquez became an easy target for their abuse.

When guards weren't looking, the others spat at her and spouted threats into her ear. In the corridors before or after their class time, they would knock whatever she carried out of her hands, or take her class notes for their own. Likewise, at meals, anything on her tray of food seemed to be fair game for them and they would help themselves to whatever she had. She let them do whatever they wanted. At some point the fight had left her and she had become resigned to her new reality.

Just like every other day before it, Vasquez watched as her cohorts laughed, taking items off of her lunch tray. It was something she had grown accustomed to. In the two months she had been there, she had gotten skinny, her natural muscle disappearing, emaciated from barely eating and not caring.

But as she ate the measly remains of what was left on her tray, half a turkey sandwich suddenly dropped down in front of her.

She looked up and saw the back of someone pass by. A tall boy. Pale and blond and muscular. She had noticed him before, sitting with the others in his group, their mannerism subdued and calculated. They seemed older than the others, or more experienced. Everyone left them alone.

Vasquez peered in his direction as she quickly devoured the sandwich, but he didn't look back at her.

The next day, in addition to half of a sandwich, he left a packaged cup of fruit salad. This time, when she looked up at him, he glanced back and gave a slight nod in the direction of the table where he was headed.

Tired of hunger and solitary, Vasquez got up to follow him. Moving across the room with her tray of food, she tentatively stood at the table in front of him.

"Sit down," he said to her.

She sat. "Thanks for the food," she said quietly and she wondered when the last time she had used her voice had been.

"You don't look so good, you know," he said to her.

"Uh, ok," she said self-consciously, looking down at her tray.

"What I mean is, it looks like you haven't eaten in a while. Looks like they're getting to you."

"How do you know that I don't always look like this?"

"Because I saw you when you got here two months ago," he answered confidently. "Everytime I see you, it's like the fight is leaving you, a little bit at a time."

Vasquez returned her gaze to her tray, unsure how to respond.

"People tend to leave you alone if you've got a group backing you. I can help you out, introduce you to some of the others," he offered.

Vasquez considered his words, skeptical. "And what would I have to give you in return?" Even from her limited amount of time in this place, she wasn't naive, she knew how things worked.

"I'm afraid the price is pretty steep," he said with a shrug. "I would need to know your name."

She studied him and saw a bit of humour present in his blue eyes. She didn't sense any hidden motives, but she was hesitant to believe anything anyone said in this place.

"Is that all?" she asked cautiously.

He gave her a sympathetic look. "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you." he said. "I promise."

Sincerity was visible in his expression. Just as she had sensed with Etta, he seemed genuinely trustworthy. She wanted to be able to trust him. "Jenette Vasquez," she said finally.

"Mark Drake," he said with a smile. "Stick with me, kid. Things will get easier from now on, you'll see."

. . .

Vasquez limped down the hall on her battered legs, holding on to the conduits on the wall for assistance. She had only the vaguest idea of what direction she needed to go in.

In the distance, she could see the light from an emergency exit sign and she moved towards it, pain throbbing in her legs at every step.

When a shadow moved across the corridor in front of her in a flash, she stopped abruptly and stood still, watching.

Less than twenty feet away, was an alien warrior skulking towards her.

Slowly, she backed up into the wall, hoping to make herself discreet, but she knew that she had no chance of not being noticed where she was standing. Her hand went to one of the jars of the improvised explosive ANFO in the pocket of her pants.

In her other hand, she pulled out the gauze she had brought with her and quickly stuffed a piece of gauze in the top of the bottle where the lid had been.

She watched as the alien stuck its head in the air as if it was sensing something close. The head looked in her direction, eyeless but still seeing.

Without warning, it broke into a run towards her and she quickly pulled out her Zippo lighter and ignited the gauze in the top of the bottle. Then she launched the flaming bottle of ammonium nitrate and it hit her target head on. The glass shattered and sparked with combustion against the assailant. She limped backwards, turning away from the sudden burst of light and heat.

A screech sounded from in front of her and she realized that the creature was still alive, albeit up in flames. It let out a howl and she stared wide-eyed as it moved towards her, its skin melting and sizzling from the flames, steam rising as shedding flesh released acidic blood, searing large holes in the floor as it continued to move forward.

Flames crackled and the smell was almost as horrific as the sight of it. Vasquez's legs gave out from under her, perhaps from pain or fear or both, and she struggled with shaking arms to pull herself backward. Then the creature fell on all fours, as it became momentarily engulfed in flames, the blaze quickly turning to dark smoke and scorched remains.

She sat transfixed, watching the charred alien carcass sizzle, holding her shirt over her mouth and nose to keep from breathing in the foul-smelling smoke. Her heart pounded and she half expected the blackened heap to come back to life. But after several seconds, there was a groan of bending metal as the floor gave way beneath the pool of acid blood and the corpse dropped from sight.

If she survived this, she was certain that the horrific images she had just seen would always remain with her.

She knew she had to keep moving, that she was running out of time. Her hands shook slightly and her fingers went to the crucifix around her neck.

"Come on, you idiot," she told herself. "Get up."

. . .

"Are you religious?" he asked her one day as they sat in the common room of the juvenile detention facility.

Over the past few months, she and Drake had started hanging out on their own more often. Away from the other detainees, they would work out or play cards together during their free time. They both liked to keep busy, hated sitting idle, enjoyed competition and having a purpose. That was where they differed from the others in their group.

They were sitting across from each other around a low coffee table, cards in hand and Vasquez looked up at Drake, curious about his question.

"Why? You wondering my secret for kicking your ass at gin?"

"Just wondering about _that_," said Drake and it took her a moment to realize he was looking at the delicate gold crucifix she wore around her neck. Usually concealed beneath the neckline of the white tee she wore under the standard-issue orange scrubs, the necklace now hung down from her neck as she leaned forward in the chair.

"It was a gift from my father," she replied after a moment, tucking it back into her shirt. Generally, any personal effects were banned in the facility, with the only exception being religious jewelry. On her first day, she had been told she could keep it on her, but 'at her own risk.' For that reason, she had lengthened the chain with a small bit of string she found and always tried to keep it hidden.

"That didn't answer my question," prompted Drake with a smile.

"Am I religious?" she repeated.

Drake watched her intently, his cards drifting down and becoming visible, the outcome of the game suddenly of little consequence, and she realized how much her answer mattered to him.

"My parents were and they tried to raise me to be. But I don't know if it really 'stuck'. I never felt like I was a good person so it seemed kinda hypocritical to consider myself that way. But I always kept it around my neck... I guess I felt I needed all the help I could get."

Drake eyed her up and then his face brightened. "Look at this." He pushed up his sleeve and showed her the underside of his bicep, where there was a complicated tattoo of a line-drawn eight-pointed star, a different symbol branching off and crowning the end of each point.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked her and she shook her head. "This is called a vegvísir. It's a Nordic sigil, an ancient symbol that's meant to show the way forward, the right path in life to follow. Now, you could argue that it didn't work for me," he smiled, "But then again, what kind of mess would I be in now if I didn't have it?"

Vasquez looked up from the vegvísir and met his gaze. "You believe in these things Drake? That there is someone or something watching out for us?"

"Truthfully, I believe that the only one watching out for us is _us_," he said confidently. "But in order to stay on the right path, sometimes we need guidance. We have to draw knowledge and power from things outside of ourselves. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but we get to decide whether those experiences make or break us. Ultimately, we're always in control of our own fate."

Vasquez watched Drake, his eyes blazing with intensity. In the background, the voice of an officer yelled through the common room that it was time to get back to their cells.

"You really think we're in control?" Vasquez asked him ironically.

"I know we are," said Drake resolutely.

.

After a year spent in juvenile detention, Vasquez was beginning to feel more settled. Just like other living situations she had dealt with over the years—her home in New Orleans constantly downsizing as her father got deeper into debt, her mother's unwelcoming home in Ciudad Juárez—she adapted, finding a way to see past the impediments of her situation and beginning to feel more at ease.

She knew much of that had to do with Drake. They had become close friends, almost inseparable. For a long time, Vasquez had wondered what he saw in her, why he enjoyed spending time with her so much, and early on in their friendship, she had worked up the courage to ask him about it.

"You need to build up some self-confidence, kid. If you had any, you'd know that _you're great_ and you wouldn't be asking me that question." he replied nonchalantly and his answer did seem to boost her opinion of herself.

To commemorate her first year done, Drake suggested they get tattoos.

Discreetly, they went to the detainee in charge of ink in the establishment: a girl named Meyers who accepted their offer of two packs of smokes and six weeks of Vasquez's phone time (which she hadn't been using anyway) in exchange for two small tattoos.

After they were done, they sat together in the common room. For once, they just sat in silence, not doing something to occupy themselves.

"I'm surprised you got it," said Drake eyeing her tattoo. "You've always kept pretty quiet about the whole thing."

She nodded slowly. "I'm starting to realize that I can't hide from what I did so I might as well show it. It's a part of me and this makes it official."

They had both decided to get the same thing: a thin outline of a teardrop on the left eye to memorilize the murder they each had committed. While they were both here on charges of manslaughter, Drake had always been more willing to talk about his crime. Vasquez preferred to keep the details of her story close to the chest, so this was a big step for her.

She looked back at him and his identical tattoo. "Why'd you get yours?"

"Street cred," he smiled. "I'm going to big boy prison in six months, you know. Need to start building up a reputation."

.

Five months later, Vasquez walked into her usual morning class and immediately she felt a different energy in the room as she sat at her desk beside Drake. Standing at the front of the class were two men dressed in uniform.

"What's going on?" she asked Drake, but he just shook his head, facing forward, alert and vigilant. She could tell he was highly anticipating what the men in uniform had to say.

They were Lance Corporals from the US Colonial Marine Corps and they held the attention of the class as they introduced a new program created as part of the government's Service or Jail Act.

When the seminar ended and they had all been dismissed, Drake immediately went up to speak with the two Lance Corporals. They had already fielded an array of questions, many of which were already posed by Drake, but they seemed inclined to speak with him, so Vasquez left and waited for him in the common room.

She knew Drake was planning on enlisting in the USCM. With his eighteenth birthday coming up, he would soon be forced to leave juvie for actual prison, so she was glad he was pursuing this— it could be a good alternative and she was happy for him. But either way, soon she would have to say goodbye to him, and that part she was not happy about.

Drake entered the common room with a grin on his face. She had never seen him look so happy before and the sight prompted a sudden fluttering sensation in her chest.

"They're giving me an official interview," he said to her, beaming. "Can you believe that?"

"Yeah, I can," she replied, smiling back at him genuinely. "Bet you really impressed them."

Happily, he pulled her into a hug and kissed her cheek. From afar, a guard yelled at them to "break it up," and Drake let her go and held his hands up innocently as Vasquez felt her face blush intensely.

"I haven't even told you the best part yet," he continued, unaffected by the guard's reprimand and clearly unaware of the effect his gesture had on her. "I told them about you and how well-suited you'd be for the Corps. They said they'd give you an interview too."

"But I'm not even seventeen yet. I thought you had to be—"

"They said they've made exceptions in the past if a candidate stood out to them, and I know you will, Vaz. Could you imagine the two of us getting out of here and becoming Marines together, travelling to colonies on other planets?"

"Drake," she began, and it was hard to witness his face fall in disappointment as he sensed her uncertainty. "I'm trying to get on the path of making things right… this would mean _more _killing."

"Weren't you paying attention back there?" he said with a chuckle. "It's about _protecting_ people, not killing them."

But when Vasquez gazed down at her feet, he slipped his hand in hers.

"Hey," he said, his voice calm and soothing. "I know that this is our path. I can feel it. Besides, it's just one interview. You can make your decision after that."

.

Vasquez felt a strange mix of feelings as she shook hands with the two Lance Corporals and sat down for the interview. Leading up to this, she did not bother to prepare, ignoring Drake's pleas for her to take it seriously, recommending her to tell them about her respect for authority, her experience with firearms, violence, high-pressure situations.

The interview had not even begun and she already felt nervous, forgetting what she was supposed to be saying, wishing she had prepared more. Her palms started to sweat.

She watched the men in front of her talk amongst themselves before they got started. When one snickered something inaudible to the other, she was reminded of the officers that had interrogated her when she woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed. Unlike Drake, she didn't idolize these men or envy them. Instead, she just saw another pair of fallible and potentially dishonest authority figures.

And as she began to view the men in a new light, her nervousness began to dissolve. She sat quietly watching them, skeptical and untrusting.

"So… Jenette Vasquez," one of the Lance Corporals began, looking down at his electronic tablet with her information. "What makes you think you'd be a good fit for the US Colonial Marine Corps?" There was a slight emphasis on the word _you_ and she knew it was intended to make her feel undeserving.

"Well," she began, disliking the judgemental smile that he already wore on his face, "Truthfully, I don't know if I am a good fit," she said boldly, practicing her best poker face, not wanting them to read her. "I know what I want and what I have to offer, and I can tell you exactly that. Then if you think I'm a good fit, that's up to you."

The Lance Corporal across from her frowned and glanced at his partner. "Alright…" he said tentatively. "Proceed."

In a split-second, Vasquez decided what she wanted from her life. She thought of Etta Asante, her lawyer, and how much she wanted to be like her: respectable, moral, _helpful_; making a difference in the lives of others.

"I'm in this place because I took a life," she began. "Now I'm ready to start paying for what I did by dedicating my life to something honourable."

The second Lance Corporal interrupted her with a condescending little laugh. "We're not in the business of handing out absolution."

"Isn't that exactly what you do?" She heard herself asking. "Why else would you be recruiting in a juvenile prison?"

He stared at her, momentarily at a loss for words.

"I'm willing to work my ass off, she continued, "to leave everything and everyone behind. I'll follow any orders you give me, even give my own life, just as long as the end goal is for the greater good. I don't know a lot about the USCM, only the version that we were shown in your seminar. But if joining would truly mean helping to fight for what's right, being prepared to kill or be killed in order to protect the people who can't protect themselves, then that is what I'm looking for—that's the person I already am."

.

She walked out of the interview feeling a new sense of possibility. She felt pleased with the way she had expressed herself— effective communication was often something that she struggled with. Whether she got the role or not, she didn't really care, she was proud of herself for upholding the truth of who she was and what she wanted.

But three days later when she was shuffling a deck of cards in the common room, waiting for Drake to come back from his appointment with his correctional counselor, she looked up and he was walking towards her, his face alight.

"We got it! Both of us!" He said breathlessly.

"Got what? The Marine Corps?!" she asked skeptically.

"Fuck yeah we did!"

"What?!" she laughed. "Me too? You gotta be kidding me!" She felt strangely proud and validated and she suddenly realized how much she had actually wanted it.

Because they weren't supposed to hug, Drake gave her a forceful high five with both hands forward, the connection with her palms resounding through the room and he held her stinging hands, his face lively and animated. "We're on this path together now," he said hopefully. "See, didn't I tell you I'd look after you?"

Vasquez repeated his words in her head and suddenly felt the slightest bit of indignation. She knew she shouldn't dwell on such a fleeting comment, but she couldn't seem to let it go either. She smiled tentatively. "Hang on, what do you mean by that?"

"Nothing," said Drake with a shake of his head, but instantly she could tell he was keeping something from her.

"What aren't you telling me, Mark?" she asked sternly and he seemed surprised by her tone and use of his first name.

"Relax, it's nothing, okay? I just told them that I didn't want to get into the Corps if they didn't take you too."

It took Vasquez a moment to process what Drake was saying. "You did what?" she asked in dismay.

"Whatever," said Drake with a shrug. "It worked, didn't it? We're gonna get outta this shithole and into the fucking Colonial Marine Corps!"

"What do you mean it worked?" said Vasquez, her distaste in the conversation mounting, making her feel physically ill. "So what—their decision couldn't possibly have been based on my own merit?"

Drake looked puzzled. "Going into the interview, you didn't even prepare, you didn't want this!"

"So if you thought I didn't want it, then why they hell would you give them the ultimatum that they needed to take me too?!"

Vasquez felt like her world was turning upside down, her admiration for Drake suddenly soured by the disappointing thought that he saw her as someone weak and worthless, unable to make it in life without someone like him there to show her the way. The thought disgusted her.

The guard was coming over to them now, hearing their elevated voices.

"Lower your voice, kid, this isn't an argument," said Drake sternly.

"Don't tell me what is or isn't an argument, and don't fucking call me _kid_! You're not in charge of me! I got in based on my own worth, goddammit!" And when he reached out for her hand, she made the mistake of forcefully smacking his hand away in anger.

Instantly, the guard was on top of her, restraining her, pulling back her hands roughly and promptly dragging her back to her cell.

.

Only ten detainees were selected to leave their prison sentences to join the USCM as new recruits. They were bussed to a base in South Carolina where they attended bootcamp training, thrust into the deep end and immersed in months of intense training and programming.

Essentially it wasn't programming as much as it was _reprogramming_: teenagers being purposely broken down, verbally degraded and physically depleted until they felt as insignificant as they were told they were. Then, their expended remains were slowly rebuilt, taught to covet authority instead of resist it, run towards the sound of gunfire instead if away from it.

Throughout her months there, she regularly heard other recruits say that they didn't think they would be able to make it through, and that they might actually drop dead next time they had to run ten miles or complete the circuit course. Even seasoned veterans and instructors told them that bootcamp was one of the most challenging things they ever had to do. It was true that bootcamp was physically demanding and mentally exhausting, but there was never a moment when Vasquez doubted that she could do it.

Physical training pushed her to the limit of what she thought she was capable of, daring her to exceed it. She quickly adapted to the environment and relished in the challenge that every new day brought with it.

In a way, juvenile detention had already been an effective conditioning tool. She and Drake were perhaps better equipped to handle the gruelling exercise, lack of freedom and onslaught of authority compared to some of the other recruits, but nonetheless, they still went to bed every night equally sore and exhausted.

Since their dispute in the common room in juvie four weeks earlier, her and Drake had not been on friendly terms. They spoke civilly to one another, but there were unresolved feelings between them that neither had wanted to bring up, so they kept their conversations brief and superficial.

They had been placed in different platoons, so avoiding each other had been easier once they got there. Nevertheless, they would often see each other on campus, during meals and training exercises, and Vasquez would purposely distance herself from him. She quickly fell in with a new group of fellow recruits, commiserating together and supporting one another and it felt nice to have friends once again.

At mealtime, she began seeing Drake's eyes dart over in her direction from a neighbouring table, watching as she laughed with the members of her new squad, staring suspiciously at her from afar as she joked with the others and punched Pete Finn playfully in the arm.

On a day that followed, her platoon was paired against Drake's in a friendly obstacle course competition, and she noticed him standing across from her as the two groups lined up in parallel.

"Hey Jen, that guy is just, like, staring at you _hard_," her friend Pete said, turning around to her in the lineup discreetly. "You know him?"

Pete Finn was from Iowa, born and raised on a corn farm, tall and built, slightly wild and unpredictably hot-headed. He was good fun and she liked him immediately when she met him in the barracks and he took one look at her and said, "You must be one of the folks they pulled from juive. Almost made it there a few times myself, instead I got a seventeen-year sentence on a farm in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. You gotta tell me what I missed."

Now, Vasquez glanced over at the other lineup and saw that Drake was watching her with intensity.

"Yeah, I know him. He's an asshole," Vasquez murmured to Pete under her breath. Their drill instructors were preoccupied with the recruits on the course, but talking during training could earn you a serious amount of pushups, so they couldn't be too careful.

When it was time for Pete to run the course, Vasquez saw Drake trade places in line with a couple of his platoon mates, presumably so he could be the one to run against him. It seemed strange to her that Drake would feel the need to compete against Pete, but in a way she also wasn't surprised. She was starting to consider the fact that Drake might like her as more than just a friend. It would explain why he didn't want to get into the Marine Corp without her, why he was still so unhappy about her distancing herself from him and why he was suddenly exuding unimaginable jealousy towards her friend Pete who was now the one receiving her attention.

Just before their turn, Drake gave a quick whistle and Pete glanced over at him, understanding immediately that it would be a race.

The two men took off with gusto, launching themselves over walls and throwing themselves to the ground to crawl under obstacles. Vasquez followed behind Pete when it was her turn. And while she tried to concentrate on her own performance, she couldn't help but notice how evenly matched the two were.

But towards the end of the course, when they were both heavily fatigued and trying to complete the rope climb, Drake stopped midway, looking up wearily at the rest of the length he needed to climb.

"You can stare at it all you want, boy, won't make it shorter," Pete called over to him as he steadily continued upward.

Drake, reignited, began climbing again. "Just keep your eyes on your own rope, farm boy."

"Hate to disagree 'bout who's eyeing who, but I ain't the one doing all the starin' today," Pete continued, breathing heavily as he reached the top of the rope and began climbing back down.

Drake was close behind on his own rope. Reaching the top, he made up time on his descent, potentially at the sacrifice of some of the skin on his hands.

As they raced each other to the finish, they ran shoulder to shoulder until Pete reached over to push Drake and Drake grabbed his arm and pulled him to the ground.

Vasquez skipped the rope obstacle and ran over to them before any of the drill instructors could get there. "Stop it!" she yelled as the two tumbled on the ground trying to get a punch in at each other. "Cut it out, you idiots!" She reproached, trying to pull them apart.

She should have just let them fight because all three of them got epically chewed out and then dropped for fifty push-ups. When they were done, Pete and Drake were separately quarterdecked, reportedly running drills until they could no longer stand.

.

Vasquez didn't run into Drake again until over a week later. She could tell he was avoiding her, sitting at a table farther away so he wouldn't have to see her at mealtime.

One dinner, when she finally did see him, she tried to make eye contact, but he didn't look up from his meal.

Pete sat down next to her at the table. "Hey Jen, Sharma is looking for you," he said and pointed to where the sergeant was standing near the doorway of the mess hall scanning the room until she saw Vasquez. Sergeant Sharma looked serious and made a gesture with her hand that said 'come here.'

Vasquez felt a rumble of nerves in her stomach as she got up and walked over to her. When she stood in front of her instructor, the sergeant said, "Vasquez, come with me for a moment."

Vasquez followed her, looking back at the mess hall, seeing Pete watching her curiously, and a few tables behind him, Drake's eyes now looking up at her.

Sergeant Sharma led her down the hall, to the station of tablets that hung on the wall separated by lazily-constructed dividers, intended for the infrequent personal calls that they were each allotted. She ushered her over to one of the tablets. "Your corrections councillor got a call from this number and you were asked to return it," she said, punching the ten digit number and area code into the number pad from memory, without even consulting a reference. "You're free to take your time, recruit," she offered generously and walked away as the number dialled. Vasquez felt nervous to see that it was a Mexican area code attached to the number the sergeant had entered, and her first thought was of Carmen.

The call was picked up and a woman with black hair and dark, weathered skin appeared on the screen. It took her a moment to realize that it was her aunt, someone she hadn't seen for almost two years, and infrequently before that.

"Jenette?" said her aunt.

"Camila," she greeted her, feeling worried.

"You're looking well, mija," her aunt said in Spanish, the term of endearment sounding a bit forced considering that they had never been close. Camila, her mother's sister, had never taken much of a liking to Vasquez, never showed her much affection or attention. Now she was treading softly and Vasquez dreaded what was coming next.

Camila looked down. "I need to tell you something… Your mother has passed away. A neighbour found her in the house on Saturday, she had already been gone for several days when they found her, there was nothing anyone could do."

Vasquez felt the hit of overwhelming sadness and anger, and it was hard to differentiate one emotion from the other. Like a gunshot, the feeling burned through her chest, making it hard to breathe.

Her and her mother had certainly had their differences, but she still loved her and had always pictured them one day reconciling. When she started making money, she had planned to send it to her mother to repay her for her medical bills, hopefully repairing some of the shame and hurt she had caused. The disappointment of being robbed of the opportunity felt crushing.

"Jenette? Can you still hear me?" Camila asked.

"Is that it?" Vasquez asked her grimly. Camila stared back at her and there was resentment on her face—the same exact expression that she had seen on her mother's face all too often.

"No, actually, there's something else," Camila replied. "She left a note."

At Camila's words, everything Vasquez was feeling was instantly replaced with guilt. Dark, heavy, soul-consuming guilt. Her mother's death had not been accidental. It was her fault her mother had been driven to that point.

"What did it say?" she asked her aunt quietly.

"That she felt she had no other way out," Camila replied with a look of remorse and her black eyeliner was smudged. "And that she loved you," she added as an afterthought and Vasquez knew by the way she said it that the second part was a lie.

She stared at the screen and her aunt looked uncomfortable.

"I have to go," Vasquez said definitively. "Thanks for letting me know, Camila… take care of yourself," She pressed the button to end the call before her aunt could reply.

She stood at the communication booth, her arms on the wall, supporting her. Her legs felt weak and she suddenly felt dizzy, like she might pass out. She grit her teeth as she felt her airways constrict, her face contort with grief, but no tears came to her eyes.

She let out a grunt of despair. Her chest heaved as she tried to breathe.

Then, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She turned to see Drake, standing behind her, his face looking back at her with worry. She wasn't sure how much of the conversation he had overheard, or how much of the Spanish he could have even understood. She turned away from him in embarrassment.

But Drake moved forward and pulled her into a hug. He didn't hold back, his embrace strong and caring, his hand protectively on the back of her head, holding her against him as she returned the hug, wrapping her arms around the muscles of his back.

It had been a long time since she had received an embrace filled with such genuine compassion. For much of her adolescent life, she had secretly longed to know what it felt like to be held like this by someone.

"My mother died," she said to him sadly, still wrapped in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Vaz. I'm so sorry," he said, and as his words hung in the silence, she knew that it was the end of the dispute between them.

As they held each other in the deserted hall, no authorities threatened them or yelled at them to 'break it up.' She realized that things were different now.

.

Despite the challenges, Vasquez made it through the remainder of the 70-day bootcamp term. As she attended her graduation ceremony, she let go of all other worries and uncertainties and only allowed herself to feel pride.

They were given ten days off before they would be shipped to the next phase of their training, the US Colonial Marine Corps School of Infantry. This was where she and Drake would leave the rest of the group and join the new branch of Colonial Marines of which they had been initially recruited.

Because of correctional restrictions, Vasquez and the others who were pulled from prison were not allowed to leave the base. As all of the other recruits said their goodbyes and began parting ways, Vasquez took a walk around the campus. Part of her hoped that she might run into Drake.

They had been on good terms recently, but she wanted to take advantage of the fact that they were no longer divided by their platoons to properly catch up and make amends. While she wanted to be close friends again, she also didn't want to fall into the same dynamic that they had in juvie, the one where Drake called the shots and she just followed along. She was afraid of losing herself, forgetting her newfound strength and confidence.

Vasquez wandered around the base, unable to find Drake. But they had ten upcoming unstructured days in which they would be stuck on the campus together, so there would be time to catch up.

When she eventually returned to the barracks, everyone was gone from the room with the exception of Pete Finn.

"I thought you left," she said in surprise when she saw him.

"I was waiting for you," he replied plainly. "You walked off before I could say goodbye."

"I've never been that good at goodbyes."

"Well, it didn't feel right leaving without saying it to you," he said.

Pete stood in front of her, freshly showered and smelling of Irish Spring, his dark blonde hair still wet and combed back, a stray piece of damp hair falling out of place and hanging over his forehead.

"So say it then," she said and he moved closer to her. As the gap between them closed, she found her hands automatically going to his chest and before she knew it, she was unbuttoning his shirt.

Pete swiftly pulled the shirt the rest of the way open and she heard the sound of a button hitting the ground and bouncing away. He quickly threw the shirt to the floor as Vasquez began clawing at his undershirt, her hands at his back, peeling it off of him. He pulled her right up against his body, his hands running down her back, his hot breath against the side of her forehead. He began fumbling with her shirt, trying to undress her and she aided his efforts.

In the back of her mind was the fear of getting caught, so she pushed him towards the washroom facilities and they stumbled into the showers, throwing the rest of their clothes down outside one of the stalls and pulling closed the shower curtain, both breathing hard as they fucked roughly against the tiled wall of the shower stall.

Pete held her ass and banged her against the cold tile as she egged him on. He kissed her neck and brushed his face against hers, but in a strangely unspoken understanding, they didn't kiss on the lips.

At no point did she tell him that it was her first time. She didn't want him to know.

She had never wanted her first time to be with someone who coddled her, or got the satisfaction of knowing he had taken her virginity, always owning that part of her. She was glad that this was happening on her own terms and she embraced the empowerment that it gave her.

When they were done, they didn't linger with each other for too long, and each quickly began putting their clothes back on. Once they were dressed, he looked at her affectionately. "I guess this is goodbye, Jen Vasquez."

Vasquez nodded and punched him in the arm lightly. "It was nice knowing you, Pete," she said genuinely.

As she walked out of the barracks, in a strange way she felt different; somehow liberated.

Her years growing up had been wrought with hardship and sadness, and frankly she was amazed she had even survived it. Now, she was closing the chapter of her youth, beginning her life as an adult; a fresh start.

She was more than ready for it.

. . .

Vasquez slowly picked herself up and began limping around the acid-burned holes in the floor, toward the emergency exit signs of the south wing of the Hadley's Hope operations complex.

She felt ready for this to be over. Within the twenty-or-so hours she had been there, it had truly been the mission from hell, and now she was tired, ready to either survive epically or face a gruesome death like the rest of her friends. She wasn't even sure she had a preference at this point.

When she reached the exit signs and saw the elevator, buttons still alight, she felt hopeful; she was so close to getting out now. But as she pressed the elevator button to go down, the arrival of the elevator car was slow and she glanced over her shoulder nervously.

Over the slow mechanical sounds of the elevator rising from a lower story, she could hear animal noises and she knew that one or more aliens were approaching from down the hall.

Fearing she might get discovered and ripped to shreds before the elevator made it to her floor, Vasquez took out the remaining bottle of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil from her pants and scattered the contents across the hall, creating a barrier.

As the elevator moved closer, so too did the aliens in pursuit of her and when she saw the shadow of them approaching, she threw the lighter down on the line of chemical powder and it exploded with ignition, creating what she hoped would serve as a barricade.

On the other side of the fire, she could see the white teeth, the bony vertebrae, skulking figures slinking behind the flame.

She quickly took off her vest and began fanning the flames, the extra oxygen adding heat to the blaze. The vest was heavy on one side, and when she hastily reached in the pocket to retrieve a switchblade that had been weighing it down, in addition to the knife, her hand closed around a square of folded paper.

Without even looking at it, she knew what was on the paper and it suddenly felt irreplaceable as she quickly tucked it in the pocket of her pants.

She held the knife out in front of her in defence. The vest, she tossed into the chemical fire and it ignited almost instantaneously, fueling the blaze.

The elevator car finally arrived and opened and she got in immediately, pressing the button to go down to ground level, hoping it would bring her close to the landing field. She still held the knife defensively, in case one of the creatures made a move towards her.

As she waited for the elevator to respond, her heart raced, and she saw the flash of teeth and the stalking black shadowy forms, snapping jaws and shrill screams sounding from behind the flames.

Then, there was the feeling of instant but fleeting security as the doors closed and the elevator began slowly transporting her towards salvation.


	5. Intents and Purposes

Newt was resilient but still innocent. He didn't want her to be afraid, didn't want her to remember any of this. She was still just a child, she shouldn't be experiencing these horrors.

"I'm gonna get you outta here Scout!" he yelled hoarsely after the alien that carried away Newt's motionless form. Like him, she too was now in the slimy grasp of one of the vile creatures. He didn't care what happened to him, he had to save her from this nightmare.

Hudson recalled his first interactions with Newt, earlier that day. He quickly took to appreciating the way that she engaged with him, quiet but unafraid, like he was already a friend, knowing his name even though they had never been properly acquainted.

He remembered sitting with her in the operations centre, during a moment when there was nothing to do but wait. She had asked about the knife that he wore on his belt.

"What's that?" she had asked simply.

Hudson didn't have much experience talking to children. He never had a younger sibling, nieces or nephews. Just Avery, Ian's daughter, whom he didn't get to see enough. She would soon be turning four.

"It's a combat knife. Wanna see it?"

Across the room, Ripley smoked a cigarette and raised her eyebrows as she looked on, protective of the young girl.

"It's sharp though, so I'll hold it," Hudson had added, as he unsheathed it and showed her.

Newt had looked at it curiously. "What do you use it for?" she had asked and for a moment Hudson was unsure what to say. He couldn't tell her it was for _killing_. "It's to keep the bad guys away," he had settled on.

Newt seemed to consider this. "Do you have one I can use?" The response caught Hudson off guard, and he watched the girl, completely serious, looking for something to defend herself. That was when he realized that she was one of them, part of their crew. She was young, yes, but she was tough and she had the same desire to survive that the rest of them did, maybe more so.

Hudson and Ripley exchanged a look, and he knew she had overheard.

"Maybe you'd be more interested in this, huh?" Hudson had said, putting away the knife and taking out his field technician kit. He opened it so she could see, feeling that it might be easier to talk about the tech than the knife.

"What is it?"

"It's a tech kit, I use it for working with electrical circuits, turning off lights, opening locked doors…" He faltered, unable to think of more ways to explain it to a child.

"Can it help us get out of here?" she had asked. All of the hard questions. Was this what parents had to deal with daily?

No, it couldn't help them. "Maybe," he had said. "We'll just have to wait and see."

He had lost the knife just hours later when he was being pulled through the vent. He had thrust it into the metal of the duct, holding on to the grip with all his strength, trying to keep himself from being pulled forward. But, of course, he couldn't hold onto it. He should have thrust it into the alien's body, he knew that now. He couldn't help but give a bitter laugh as he thought about his own stupidity: that moment when you're in peril and you do exactly the wrong thing with your only remaining weapon.

But then he considered what he did still have. The tech kit. A bunch of wires and battery terminals and screwdrivers. Newt's words, _'Can it help us get out of here?'_

He had been dragged by this alien fucker for long enough. Anything was worth a try.

Hudson took out the tech kit, unfolding it and pulling out the five precision screwdrivers. He held them in his fist, evaluating their weight and sharpness. With nothing to lose, he thrust the handful of screwdrivers into the alien's claw that held his leg.

There was a hiss from his captor as the sharp metal punctured flesh, a sizzling sound as the embedded screwdrivers began to disintegrate in contact with the acidic blood. Hudson let go quickly, shaking his hand, avoiding the contact with the acid.

Suddenly, there was distance between him and the alien and he realized in amazement that the tactic had worked, the claw had released him. Hudson clambered backward, afraid of being apprehended again. He backed up against a wall, his hands grasping at it for support, blood changing direction and running down his leg as he stood.

The alien looked at him with its lack of eyes, somehow seeing him, trying to predict his next moves. It was a showdown. But Hudson knew where he was now. This was the place where six of his comrades had fallen. He would be damned if he was number seven.

As the alien darted towards him, Hudson jumped out of its path. Just a few meters away, he saw what he had been looking for. Lying on the ground was an M41A pulse rifle. He had remembered seeing it lying there during their first encounter with the swarm when Apone had been taken, the pulse rifle left behind as the only evidence that he had ever been there.

Hudson lunged forward, falling to the ground as he grabbed the weapon. He gave a whoop of triumph when he saw that the magazine had not been removed. From the ground, he fired.

The alien screeched and backed up in distress.

Getting to his feet, Hudson gritted his teeth. "End of the line, asshole," he said to the creature, then aimed well and held the trigger and watched as the alien's skull erupted. Acid sprayed, and he moved backward, shielding his face with his arm, but he was out of range.

He lowered the weapon that had belonged to Apone. His broken wrist hurt like hell, but his thoughts were only of his former Sergeant, his mentor and friend. Had Apone not been taken, had he removed the magazine, or dropped his gun in any other location, Hudson would surely be dead.

'Thank you Sarge,' he thought.

There was an eerie calm that followed as he limped through the dark, steamy space, dazed but determined. Everything felt like a dream, every pale face and shrouded figure could have passed for Newt in the dim light. He was exhausted, his head throbbed and each step sent pain rushing through his leg, but he needed to find Newt, and that kept him going.

He held out Apone's pulse rifle pointing it at every shadow as he moved. His shoulder lamp was damaged from being dragged, but he hit it a couple times with the butt of his gun and thankfully it flickered on, dim, but still enough to light his way.

In the low light of the lamp, a flash of red caught his eye. A perfect crimson circle in a mass of dark chaos.

He moved closer, immediately recognizing what he was seeing: a red, rising sun painted on the white bandage wrap—support for a bad wrist that was easily aggravated. In black letters, the Japanese Kanji symbol for 'faith', or so she had once told him.

Instantly, he knew it was Dietrich. He stared disbelievingly at her, right in front of him, her wrist still in the wrap, just as it had been in the dropship when he gave her a fist-bump for good luck and a wink, just because.

She was bound up against the wall, just as the others were. She was motionless, but still breathing and dried blood coated her hairline.

Covering her face was a grey, spider-like facehugger.

. . .

Two years ago, Dietrich had been there for him when things had gotten to be too much.

It was two weeks into their mission on Gliese 667 Cc, and Hudson's mental state was growing worse with each day. The lack of concentration, insomnia and daytime exhaustion was becoming almost too much to bear. He knew that all of it was affecting his work and the others were starting to notice.

At some point since Louise's death, Hudson's grief had mutated into anger. He was moody, spoke sharply and started talking back more than usual. Even Apone, who had been a bit more lenient with him when he first received the news, was now snapping at him regularly and had to issue a few serious warnings to him. But Hudson was finding it hard to care, his anger winning the battle over common sense.

He was angry that she had been taken so suddenly by something so unexpected. Louise had been healthy, athletic, she ate well and exercised. She could easily outpace him when they went running together, despite his strict fitness regimen. How could she have died from a heart condition? How could it have been right after their engagement, his future bride diagnosed and departed all within the _twenty days_ when he was unable to communicate with her, unable to comfort her or tell her that he loved her one last time.

The resentment festered inside of him as he reflected on the unfairness of it all. Right when things seemed to be going his way, everything was taken from him. Maybe that was just the way it would always be, maybe he just wasn't meant to be happy.

All of these thoughts, he eventually shared with Dietrich.

One morning when they were having breakfast, Dietrich sat beside him and discretely handed him a bottle of prescription sleeping pills. He hadn't asked her for them, but she was intuitive and aware of what he was going through, knew that he wasn't sleeping. He thanked her and planned on trying them out that night, looking forward to a good night's sleep.

But when nighttime came, he took out a bottle of whiskey from his wardrobe, and opened the container of pills, pouring the contents into his hand. He had intended to take all of them, drink as much whiskey as he could stomach. He pictured himself doing it and for a few moments he thought he was really going to. But then, his hands began to shake, the pills scattering to the floor, and his face was in his hands. He knew that this was different from the other things he was feeling. He knew he needed help.

He found himself knocking on Dietrich's door and she opened it, her eyes clouded with sleep, but then instantly awake when she saw his face. She led him inside and they sat on her bed and he began talking. He was still shaking as she hugged him.

They laid on her bed and talked until he accidentally fell asleep there. She had just let him sleep, covered him with the blanket, slept beside him, and in the morning when he woke next to her and tried to apologize, she stopped him.

"Don't," she had said. "Never be sorry for something like that. I'm here for you and I always will be."

It wouldn't be the last time that Dietrich had been there for him. Nor the last time he would sleep in her bed.

.

Twenty days into their mission and they received another night off.

Hudson had missed the crew's first night out on Gliese. Not feeling up for a rave on the Darkside of the planet, he had told them he wasn't feeling well and instead spent the night in his room, re-watching all the transmissions Louise had ever sent to him.

But lately he had been starting to feel a bit better, like he was coming out of the dark place he had been in, beginning to feel more capable of handling everyday situations. He decided the night out might do him some good.

Aside from Apone and Bishop, the rest of the crew decided to go, this time selecting a popular bar in the most inhabited part of the colony. They checked into a hotel close by and then went for dinner at a nice place with a variety of worldly cuisines; a classy gathering before they would all get shitfaced together.

But once at the bar, Hudson felt the melancholy begin to set in again. When Frost got up to get them another round of beers, he sat at the table alone, watching the rest of the crew have fun.

Frost had gotten distracted on his way to the bar and stood next to two attractive women at a neighbouring table. But even as Frost pointed Hudson out, and one of the women waved a greeting to him, Hudson's mood remained the same. He just nodded back to her and when Frost tried to signal for him to come over, he looked away, pretending not to notice.

On the other side of the bar, Vasquez and Drake seemed to be arguing. He had overheard them yelling in Vasquez's room the night before. Tonight, the two had barely spoken at dinner. Now, Vasquez looked aggravated as they spoke, away from the rest of the group. Finally, she threw up her hand and gave a frustrated laugh, walking away and over to the table.

Vasquez walked towards where Hudson now sat and surprisingly, she took a seat next to him at the table.

"What happened there?" Hudson asked, glancing over at Drake who was pacing angrily on the spot, mouthing profanities inaudible from where they were sitting.

"I dunno. I don't wanna talk about it," said Vasquez plainly and she looked back at Hudson. "That girl over there has been eyeing you up," she said with a raise of her eyebrows. "You're not going to do anything about it?"

"Dunno, don't wanna talk about it," he said, echoing her response.

"Cool," Vasquez nodded. "Wanna get fucked up?"

"Yup."

.

Hudson and Vasquez sat at the bar, laughing. They drank bourbon, neat at first, appreciating the sweet and spicy notes, but after downing their second glass, the bartender just began bringing it out to them as shots. After a while, they switched to tequila.

The shots seemed to numb everything that Hudson didn't want to feel. He was having fun. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so carefree. Vasquez seemed to be enjoying herself too, at one point laughing so hard that she nearly fell off her bar stool, sending them both into hysterics.

He liked seeing Vasquez laugh, but even more, he liked the expression she would get as the laughter slowly faded and she was just left smiling. The look lingered on her face as she glanced back at him now. "It's good to see you back, man," she said.

"What d'you mean?"

"You haven't really been yourself lately," she replied as her smile disappeared and her brows knitted together slightly.

"I know. Guess I've been a bit of a pill these days," Hudson admitted.

"Yeah, you have been. But mostly, you just seemed a bit lost," said Vasquez with uncharacteristic gentleness.

Hudson just nodded, considering her words.

Just then, Frost and Dietrich came up to the bar on either side of them and Frost signalled to the bartender and ordered a couple of beers.

"What'd you do to Drake?" Dietrich asked Vasquez. "He's been moping around all night."

"I hadn't noticed," said Vasquez and they exchanged a laugh.

"So, you guys wanna rejoin the group or you just gonna sit here laughing like a couple of hyenas?" Frost asked Hudson and Vasquez as he accepted his beer from the bartender.

"These hyenas gotta stick by the watering hole. They ain't fillin' the drinks fast enough over there," replied Hudson and Vasquez held up her shot to him in approval, making an impromptu barking sound, setting off their laughter again.

"How many have you guys had?" Dietrich asked him, a hint of concern in her voice. She looked at Hudson and he knew she was worried about him drinking too much, no doubt due to the fragile emotional state he had exhibited recently.

"Aw, it's fine, Dee," he said to her. Frost and Vasquez were talking now, so he felt like he could say more without being overheard. "You don't have to worry. The tequila is makin' me feel pretty damn good right now."

"I don't doubt it," said Dietrich, looking apprehensive.

"Know what you need?" He asked her, nudging her arm cheerfully.

"What?" she said, looking back at him, a smile breaking through her expression of uneasiness.

"You need to catch up," he replied, signaling to the bartender to give Dietrich a shot.

.

Much of the night seemed to move quickly, subsequent moments playing out in a haze of vague snippets: drinking at the bar with Dietrich until they could no longer manage the bar stools; a drunken arm wrestle between Crowe and Frost; the friendly but relentless abuse the team gave Karim for dropping his pint for the second time.

Then there were certain things in the night that seemed more noteworthy: Ferro pulling Spunkmeyer on to the dancefloor, the two of them dancing a bit too close; Drake arguing with Vasquez, trying to convince her of something and an irritated Vasquez shutting him down; Dietrich's hand on Hudson's shoulder when no one was watching, softly rubbing his back.

He and Dietrich sat side by side, both silent as everyone else at the table talked loudly and drank, distracted with other exchanges. At some point, Hudson had stopped talking, too drunk to carry a proper conversation. He wasn't sure exactly how long Dietrich had been beside him at the table, but she had evidently noticed the shift in his demeanor and he now felt the concern in her touch as he sat slightly hunched over, arms on the table and his head heavy.

It felt comforting as her hand ran over his back, transferring warmth to his skin through the fabric of his t-shirt. There was something so consoling about the gesture; an attempt to take care and connect, combat some of the sadness he held in his heart.

Dietrich moved closer to him now so that her shoulder was behind his. He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn't want to meet her gaze. As much as he liked the feeling of her attention, her closeness somehow felt wrong, like a betrayal to Louise. Acknowledging it meant that he would have to take an action of some kind, and he was feeling too drunk and exhausted to do anything other than sit, so he remained staring at the table.

After a moment, her arm wrapped around him, her hand on his far shoulder. "Hudson," she uttered and her voice was close. "You want me to walk you back to the hotel?"

Hudson turned to her but didn't look her in the eyes. He was suddenly very aware of his own drunkenness and knew he should go back, although the thought of walking there seemed like a next to impossible feat. Still, he declined her help.

"I got it." Deciding he had to leave, he stood up quickly. Instantly, the room began spinning and he braced his arms against the table.

"Let me walk with you," Dietrich offered, her hands on him again.

"No," said Hudson, hoping his response didn't come out more forcefully than he had intended. "Thanks," he added. "I'm fine, I got this."

Hudson moved past her and the others sitting at the table. He felt slightly rattled, the alcohol manipulating the emotions inside of him, suddenly twisting his sadness into feelings of irritability.

He was making his way to the exit when he tried to brush past a group of colonists to get to the door and misstepped, accidently shoulder-checking someone. He looked up at the stranger he had bumped into, and most of the man's drink had spilled down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.

The man looked instantly livid and pushed Hudson roughly. Taken by surprise and nearly losing his balance, Hudson was suddenly incensed.

"What the fuck, man, was a fucking accident!" he slurred in annoyance and shoved the man back in retaliation, the rest of the drink now crashing to the floor, glass shattering.

Before he could try to form another sentence, there was a flash of movement and the man's fist socked Hudson in the mouth and he momentarily stood hunched over, a hand on his mouth, feeling blood from a split lip trickle down his chin. While he knew his blood alcohol level was preventing him from feeling the pain he should have felt, one thing he was feeling plenty of was anger. It now boiled inside of him as he entered into a state of instability. He lashed out at the man, punching repeatedly until he was on the ground on top of him, Hudson's fist dripping with the other man's blood.

There were hands clawing at Hudson, most likely belonging to the friends of the man he was beating. Then he heard his name being called, and someone wrestled him from behind, a man's arms coming around him in a bear hug, pulling him up off the ground, holding his arms down by his sides so he couldn't do anymore damage. Hudson struggled to shake off the restraint.

Hicks' voice was beside his ear, "Fuck, relax Hudson! Calm down, buddy."

It was like Hudson was waking from a dream, aware of his dissipating rage as he watched his opponent get helped to his feet, the man's face swollen, blood streaming from his nose. He couldn't believe he had just done that, and he looked down at his own shaking, blood-stained hands. Wide-eyed and breathing heavily, he stared up at Hicks.

Hicks now had his hands on Hudson's shoulders and was staring back at him. "You alright, man? What the fuck was that about?!"

Over Hicks' shoulder, he could see the others watching him. Vasquez's dark eyes stared at him in scrutiny and Dietrich looked stunned as she pushed past people, trying to make her way over where they were standing. He knew the others were surprised; outside of a combat scenario, he wasn't one to act so aggressively, let alone against a civilian. He felt ashamed, and he looked back at Hicks, trying to find an answer. "I…" he began, but he was at a loss.

Shouting had erupted from behind him, the friends of the beaten colonist yelling at him in anger. Panicked and dazed, Hudson pulled away from Hicks, turned and stumbled out of the bar.

.

Hudson woke to daylight beating ruthlessly into his face. He was in a bed, the covers tossed off his bare chest, feeling hot and extremely hungover. Somehow, he had gotten back to his hotel room last night. But as he turned over, he realized he wasn't in his room and he wasn't alone in the bed.

Dietrich was beside him, still asleep and he suddenly felt wide awake as he looked at her in confusion.

Automatically, he lifted the covers below his waist and was slightly relieved to see that he was still wearing his boxers. He felt like he would remember them having sex if it had happened, so he was pretty sure that it hadn't.

Despite the heat of the room, he pulled the hotel sheet over his chest and held his arms over his face and groaned quietly as he remembered drinking too many shots, fighting a colonist, getting lost and falling asleep outside the hotel, unable to find his room key or remember his room number.

"You're alive," said a voice and he realized immediately that it didn't belong to Dietrich, but Vasquez from the other bed in the room. He looked over at her as she rubbed her eyes and he could tell that she was hungover too. There was no way someone wouldn't be, after the amount they had consumed.

"I can't remember the end of the night," he groaned. His jaw hurt and he felt the split in his lip reopen as he spoke, "How did I get in here?"

"We found you lying outside. You were completely fucked, so we put you to bed," said Vasquez, and then she added cheekily, "You know, right after we _had our way with you_."

Hudson stared at her, assuming she was joking, but not ruling out any possibility.

"Stop scaring him, Vaz," Dietrich said, yawning as she stirred beside Hudson. She opened her eyes, squinting in the daylight as she looked up at him. "She's messing with you, but yeah, you were completely out of it when we found you."

"Shit, sorry guys, don't know what happened to me last night," said Hudson remorsefully. He looked at his hands, the knuckles of his right hand swollen and bruised, still covered in dried blood. "Think I nearly killed that fuckin' civvy."

"Ah, he was fine. Plus, he started it, everyone saw that," said Dietrich and Hudson exhaled, feeling a bit better. Then Dietrich reached over and took a hold of his swollen hand. He watched as she began examining his knuckles, gingerly pressing the different bones in his hand and wrist, gently feeling her way up each of his fingers. She looked over at him sporadically to gauge his reaction, waiting for an indication of pain to help locate any broken bones.

It felt unexpectedly intimate lying in the bed beside Dietrich as she held his hand, taking her time to examine it. Even after she had seemed satisfied that he was fine, her hands still lingered, holding his, as if not wanting to let go. Their eyes locked for a moment, her brown eyes still sleepy, but looking back at him warmly.

Then there was movement beside them as Vasquez got up from her bed and began getting dressed. Hudson felt a bit embarrassed knowing that Vasquez had witnessed the brief moment of tenderness between him and Dietrich, but was pretending she hadn't. He wasn't sure why that bothered him.

The door opened suddenly, and Ferro entered, in her clothes from the night before. She looked surprised, perhaps not expecting so many people to be in the room.

"Walk of shame, Ferro?" said Vasquez, looking up at her.

"Should have brought him here so we could crash your threesome," Ferro shot back, and Hudson vaguely wondered if she had spent the night with Spunkmeyer.

"Vaz is avoiding Drake and Hudson couldn't find his room last night," said Dietrich, explaining why the two were in the room that she originally had just shared with Ferro.

"_Riiight_," said Ferro with a sly smile, preferring her own explanation for the extra roommates. "You enjoy your stay, Hudson?" She winked at him.

"Don't hear me complainin', do you?" he replied quickly, going along with the joke.

"I'm not avoiding Drake," Vasquez said in response to Dietrich's earlier comment, "He was just being an asshole last night, so I didn't want to ask him for the room key."

"Sounds a lot like avoiding him to me. What did he do anyway?" Ferro asked.

Vasquez gave Ferro a callous look. "Whose bed were you in last night, Ferro?" she countered, and Ferro just raised her eyebrows in amusement, but said nothing. "Exactly," said Vasquez, "Let's all just mind our own fucking business, get back to the dropship and pretend this night never happened."

"Sounds good to me," agreed Hudson, sitting up too fast. Head throbbing and nausea swirling, he fell back into the bed. "Dietrich, please arrange a medevac to airlift me outta here," he said, words muffled by the pillow.

Dietrich laughed and patted his shoulder. "You're okay, slugger. You'll survive."

. . .

Hudson now stared at Dietrich's lifeless form, encased in hard resin, her face masked by the alien lifeform that now controlled her body. "Fuck," he said in sorrow, barely able to comprehend what a cruel fate had befallen her.

He slumped against the wall beside her, not caring that he was in contact with the slimy resin, he wanted to be near her, but not have to see that thing covering her face. He knew she wouldn't want to be remembered that way.

He reached out and took her hand, slipping his fingers between hers, surprised to feel how warm her skin was.

"Dietrich, can you hear me?" He asked, but part of him was hopeful that she wouldn't be conscious. He didn't want her to be experiencing this right now; it was better that she was in this catatonic state. Still, on the off chance that she could hear him, he spoke to her.

"I'm here, Dee. I'm right here with you, you're not alone," he said softly and he squeezed her hand.

Looking down, he noticed that her VP70 was still holstered at her hip and he realized that she must have been knocked out shortly after her capture or else she surely would have pulled out the handgun and tried to use it. Although tragic, the thought gave him a small bit of comfort in thinking that she likely wasn't conscious for the part where the facehugger attacked her.

Hudson let go of her hand for a moment to pull Dietrich's pistol out of its holster. Sure enough, the 18-round mag was still full.

He wasn't certain what she could feel now or how much longer she had before the creature would try to burst through her chest, but he knew what she would have wanted.

He had been lucky to know Dietrich. He felt like he was a better person because of her. There was a significant chance he might not be alive now had it not been for her.

"I'm sorry, Dee. I'm sorry I wasn't there to save you from this."

He held her hand tightly, ignoring the pain from his broken wrist. With the pistol in his good hand, he held it up to the side of her head.

"You deserved better." His hand was shaking, tears coming to his eyes. His finger squeezed the trigger.

. . .

Thirty days into their mission on Gliese 667 Cc, things changed considerably.

Around the colonies, they had successfully interrupted several attempted cargo heists and handed half a dozen perpetrators over to the colonial authorities. They had yet to uncover the headquarters for the crime ring, but the trail was leading to the Darkside of Gliese.

The Darkside was cold, barren and rocky, stretching a distance larger than all of Earth's land masses combined. Stumbling across their target was not an option, they were relying on their surveillance tools to help direct them. Unfortunately, it meant that a lot of the work they were doing was dull and time consuming, monitoring tracking devices they had placed on shipments, reviewing audio and video from locations they had bugged with recording devices, often having to fly back to the colonies to plant more bugs and adjust tracking equipment.

To make the most of their time, they began staying overnight in the Darkside, setting up basecamp in the bleak and windy canyons of the North-east quarter where they would hopefully be undetected. They stayed for 72-hour intervals, broken into six twelve-hour shifts alternated between the two squads.

Hudson sat in the canvas tent, shivering in front of a computer screen at the improvised workspace they had created to review the surveillance data. He had been at it for over eight hours, pouring over real-time satellite imagery of Sector Twelve, scanning the expanse for infrastructure, aircraft or rover activity; anything out of the ordinary.

The temperature outside was close to freezing and a light dusting of snow covered the rocky ground. This far from the atmospheric processors, the air was thin, and to go outside of the tent or the APC for more than a minute required the use of an oxygen mask. Filtered air pumped into the large one-room tent from the APC, and although the canvas did a fairly good job of keeping oxygen in, it did little to keep out the cold.

As Hudson sat doing his work, his toes were numb and his hands were freezing. He rubbed his hands together, blowing into them for heat and turned to Vasquez beside him.

"I now see what you were saying about this mission sucking," he said to her quietly. Only meters away, Drake, Hicks, Dietrich and Frost were taking their sleep shift. In less than an hour, they would be woken so that they could all have a few hours of overlap together for a debrief, strategizing and a communal meal before they would begin their surveillance shift and then Hudson and the rest of First Squad would take their turn getting some shut-eye.

Vasquez paused the video footage she had been reviewing on her laptop. "Yeah, man. Is it bad that I'm hoping to be ambushed right now? This shit is the worst," she agreed in a low voice. She glanced up to see if Apone had overheard, but he was wearing headphones, listening to an audio recording.

Outside, Crowe was on lookout duty. The final member of their squad, Karim, sat across from them, monitoring shipment trackers. Although a skilled sharpshooter and a handy person to have around in combat, he was notorious for being the most unenthusiastic member of the crew. Karim's brown eyes darted up from his screen now and he looked like he was about to crack up from boredom. He gave them both a deadpan look and returned his gaze to his laptop.

Hudson flashed Vasquez a smile. "Hey Vaz," he whispered, "What d'you call it when a bunch of marines share the same damn camp for 72 hours?" He paused for effect. "In tents." _Intense_.

Vasquez shook her head slowly at the bad joke, but a smile grew on her face and she struggled to suppress a laugh.

He grinned. "That was a good one, huh?"

She shook her head again, "No." But the smile was still on her face as she turned back to her screen and resumed her work.

Hudson watched her momentarily, pleased with himself for getting a laugh from her, when something on her screen caught his attention.

"Wait, back that footage up," he said quickly, and she looked at him in surprise, and then promptly replayed the last thirty seconds of the surveillance video.

"There. How long has it been doing that?" He asked seriously.

"Doing what?"

"That flash in the video, it's like a quick skip in the footage. How many times have you seen that?"

"I dunno," said Vasquez, "I think it's been happening for the entire time I've been watching. Happens in all the videos."

There was a reason Hudson was the combat technician for the crew. He was the most tech-savvy member of the team, proficient in a wide array of technologies and surveillance equipment. Now, as he watched the screen, he was confident in what he was seeing. Or in this case, what he was not seeing.

"It's a glitch," He said moving in close to Vasquez and taking over her laptop, replaying the spot where the footage skipped. "Someone's tampered with the video, replaced it with their own. It's running on a loop, see? You say you noticed it in all of the recordings?"

Vasquez nodded, an uneasiness spreading across her face. He could tell she was mentally kicking herself for not catching it.

"It's a hard thing to spot, just looks like a fault in the camera," he said benevolently, trying to save her from feeling too bad about it. "Okay, uh, go back to the beginning of all of the recordings, find the last point of real data before the skip happens. We'll note the time and I'll bring up the past satellite imagery for each location—then we'll see who's been screwing around with our shit."

"You got it," replied Vasquez and he knew she was impressed.

.

It was the break they needed. By the time Second Squad awoke from their sleep, Vasquez and Hudson had pinpointed the time each of the cameras had been tampered with and identified a vehicle that appeared in each of the satellite images.

As the timelines converged to reveal a single target, Hudson followed the vehicle via satellite. The camera tampering had happened days earlier, so he tried his best to speed up the frames, looking into the snapshots of the past, working quickly to chase the target back to the present.

As he worked, he felt like he had a newfound sense of purpose. He was so focused that he barely noticed that the others had eaten and his squad had gone to sleep as he continued to work.

"I hear you made the big discovery," said Dietrich from beside him.

He looked up at her and smiled. Her face was flushed as she set down a plate of food next to him: eggs, bacon and toast.

"Take a break, eat something," she said softly. "Better yet, let me take over and you get some rest.

"Thanks Dee, but I'm still good. Feel like I'm on a mission now, wanna see where this guy is goin'."

She pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

"Buddy's been traveling all around the industrial zone," said Hudson, studying the target on the screen quizzically. "Maybe doin' drops or pickups, it's hard to make out. But see? Now he's headin' towards the Darkside. Sector twelve, like we suspected. Think he's gonna lead us right to the hub."

"What time is this at?" asked Dietrich.

"This is yesterday morning now."

"So we're getting close."

"Closer than two in the bed and three in the middle," said Hudson with a half smile, as he sped up the frame, hand rotating and swiping on the multi-touch navigation, interfacing with the constantly moving image on the screen. Dietrich watched him work.

As the interactive hunt led deeper into the Darkside, the quality of the satellite image degraded slightly. Despite the lack of light on that side, the satellite still did a decent job of producing an image, but it was grainy, more difficult to decipher, and without warning, the rover passed through a shadowed area and the vehicle disappeared from view.

"No," Hudson breathed in frustration as he scanned the area, jumped forward and backward through time looking for their target. After minutes with no luck he hung his head and sighed. Dietrich put a placatory hand on his arm.

"Hey, it's okay, we'll figure it out," she said consolingly. "You're exhausted. Come on, you only have five more hours before wake-up, get some sleep."

He sighed but eventually nodded in reluctant agreement and got up from his chair, as Dietrich took over the search.

.

Hudson sat outside in the brisk air, staring into darkness. Their use of lighting in the basecamp was kept at a minimum as to not attract the attention of any aircrafts or satellite surveillance belonging to the other side, but he had brought out his shoulder lamp and turned it on to its dimmest setting.

He leaned against a rocky ledge, brushing his teeth and spit toothpaste into the gravel and poured water from his canteen over his toothbrush. He inhaled deeply from the oxygen mask, his head buzzing from the lack of air: a small price to pay for minty-fresh breath.

The sound of someone approaching startled him and Hudson spun in the direction of the sound. In front of him, Drake shielded his eyes against the light from Hudson's shoulder lamp. Drake was on lookout duty and he took off his oxygen mask to speak.

"You mind?" Drake said in annoyance and Hudson turned off the lamp, the space around them only lit by the dim light from the tent.

"You know Hudson..." Drake began and there was an unexpected hostility in his voice that caught Hudson by surprise.

"What?" said Hudson uneasily as he waited for Drake to continue his thought.

Drake took in more oxygen from the mask and huffed out a breath, as if deciding not to continue talking, but then he did so anyway. "Do you fucking like her, man?" he asked, his voice full of resentment.

"Who?" asked Hudson wide-eyed, now completely confused.

"Vasquez, who d'you think?" Drake shot back. "I see the two of you, laughing, sleeping close together." He spat on the ground.

"Drake, you're out to lunch man, we're friends," Hudson replied honestly, a tinge of annoyance rising inside him. "What? She need your permission to have friends?"

Suddenly, Drake's hands were holding the front of Hudson's jacket roughly, "You punk. What's she been telling you?"

Hudson pushed Drake away forcefully. He gasped for air and held the oxygen to his face. "What the fuck, man?!" He yelled into the mask, words muffled before he pulled it away. "What the hell's your problem?!"

Drake looked regretful. "Sorry," he said gruffly and he exhaled. "It's just this place, the darkness—it's like I'm being consumed by the worst thoughts in my head. It's got me all fuckin' rattled." Hudson could hear the hurt behind Drake's words, and he felt his annoyance begin to fade a bit. He could relate to those feelings.

"Yeah, well, Vasquez and I are just friends, we work together, so you can check your paranoia, bud," he responded blankly. But when Drake was silent, Hudson felt obliged to say more. "Just give her some space. You two go way back, I'm sure she'll come around."

Drake grunted again and Hudson turned away from him.

Damn right things were getting _intense_.

Snow began to fall as Hudson walked back to the tent to get some sleep.

.

Hudson lay in his sleeping bag on the thin mat. He was uncomfortable, cold, his mind busy. The combination made it impossible to sleep. He rolled over and looked at Vasquez sleeping beside him.

During their sleep shifts, he and Vasquez did always sleep next to one another for some reason. Space in the tent was limited, and it was warmer next to another body, so maybe he and Vasquez did sometimes sleep close together—undoubtedly closer than he would have with any other member of his squad. One shift, he actually woke up with his arm draped over her waist. She woke at the same time, eyeing the arm resting over her sleeping bag and he promptly removed it and apologized, but she never said anything.

Even earlier when Hudson had laid down to sleep, Vasquez seemed to move closer towards him, whether intentionally or unintentionally, he didn't know. Although the simple action seemed harmless, he thought about what Drake had said. Certain that he didn't want to overstep his bounds, he consciously moved away from her.

Hudson checked his watch. Twenty minutes to go before wake-up. He hadn't slept at all, but he knew he wasn't going to get any sleep now. He got up from his sleeping bag, being careful not to wake the others as he put on his combat boots and pulled his jacket over the uniform he had slept in.

Then he went over to Dietrich who was still in front of the screen, scanning the satellite data.

"Mornin'," he said groggily to her, although his watch had indicated it was around 2pm.

Dietrich smiled at him. "Hold on to your socks," she said. "We got something."

.

It was a series of underground tunnels that they had ended up discovering. Remnants of what had once been a cobalt mine, a large underground cavern and three main shafts still remained in-tact. Dietrich made the find after noticing the shadow of a plane in one of the satellite frames: an aircraft circling continuously over the site; patrolling. Suspecting the site was somewhere underground, she looked up geological information for the area and uncovered the mine.

However, a moment that should have felt triumphant took a turn when Apone contacted Gateway Station and reported the findings to their acting superior, Lieutenant Milnes. The response he received back was a directive to stage an immediate incursion, a raid on the hub.

"Lieutenant Milnes, please advise, I believe I heard that you wanted us to infiltrate the site." Apone spoke into screen, recording a transmission to be sent back to Gateway. The others watched in silence. "I should remind you that this is a reconnaissance team consisting entirely of eleven personnel. The scope of the target is currently unknown. Requesting permission to continue recon and defer ambush until we can train and assemble a colonial law enforcement team for backup."

The crew waited anxiously for the transmission response from Gateway, talking in low voices amongst themselves. Even Ferro and Spunkmeyer had come into the tent now looking nervous, albeit well-rested, and Hudson felt instantly jealous of their pull-down cots in the dropship where he suspected they had a good night's sleep.

The transmission was returned five minutes later. "Request denied, Sergeant," came the Lieutenant's voice through the transmission, and there was a communal stir of disbelief and anger amongst the crew, and Apone held up his hand to quiet them so he could hear the rest of the message. "The Company is bleeding resources from this planet, they want this taken care of today with no endangerment to colonial law enforcement. You are cleared to use force, just secure the cargo. Make it happen, Apone."

When the transmission ended, Apone looked angry, but said nothing.

"So it's a suicide mission," Karim vocalized first, but they all had been thinking it. It was almost unheard of to infiltrate a base of armed targets without first doing adequate recon to determine what they were up against.

"It's not a suicide mission," said Apone, but he sounded unconvinced of his own words.

Dietrich was by Apone's side quickly, "Sarge, I don't think we should forget that there could be noncombatant colonists among the targets, we can't just go in shooting. Maybe Milnes doesn't know—"

"He knows, Dietrich," said Apone regretfully.

"Company just cares about their bottom line," said Hicks spitefully, "Securing their cargo. Doesn't matter to them how many die in the process."

"Look," said Apone, this is the directive and it's our duty to follow. We're gonna do this tonight. Now I suggest we start strategizing so we're not caught with our pants down when we get there."

.

The team spread out along the precipice of the canyon, getting their first true look at the site. Two stories down was the mouth of a large cavern. From the inside, an orange glow of light emanated as voices echoed through the tunnels and out towards them. Three main tunnels branched off underground from the cavernous entrance.

From where he crouched, Hudson could already see at least two individuals with oxygen masks patrolling around the front, automatics slung over their shoulders.

Hudson drew in a breath, replaying their combat strategy in his head. This mission relied heavily upon his role as combat technician to perform reconnaissance as they went. Everything needed to go smoothly in order to ensure they all made it out alive. The responsibility weighed heavily on him.

Selecting a point along the precipice that provided the best view of the site, Hudson placed three sensors in the ground, a few feet apart from one another. Then, he pulled out a specialty recon transmitter and turned it on, watching the screen on the monitor come to life. Activating the triangulating sensors, he could suddenly see on the screen the infrared perspective view of the occupants underground.

"Sensors online, infrared monitor up and running," he said over the radio.

"Good deal, Hudson," said Apone's voice. "How many we got?"

Hudson scanned the monitor, counting the number of bodies. "We got two at entrance, two in west tunnel, three in east tunnel, five in center… adjoining inner cavern holds fifteen—twenty, maybe more. Rear entrance unknown."

"Good enough for me," said Apone. "Let's smoke 'em out. Karim, get ready with the tear gas."

"Copy that, sir," said Karim.

"On my mark. Three, two, one, fire."

There was the resounding pierce of a missile, and then two more, as Karim fired the tear gas projectiles in sequence from the precipice, through the front of the cavern and into each of the three tunnels. As the smoke from the high-pressure canisters travelled through the tunnels, Hudson could see many of the infrared forms reacting to the warning, about ten running towards the rear entrance to escape. Afterward, they would fly overhead and round up and apprehend anyone on the surface, but for now, the directive was to secure the shipments of resources onsite. A few people seemed to linger in the tunnels, perhaps equipped with full-face oxygen masks like they had. The monitor also showed a large group convening in the middle cavern.

Suddenly, the hum of an aircraft sounded from above them as the patrolling plane came into view to investigate the screech of the tear gas missiles.

"Time to move, crew!" yelled Apone over the radio.

Quickly, they all moved down the side of the canyon. As the patrolling aircraft suddenly opened fire, lights from their own dropship blazed into view, coming up over the canyon and began firing overhead.

"Move, move!" shouted Apone as they scaled the steep and rocky slope trying to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of the duelling ships.

As they reached the bottom of the canyon and entered the mouth of the cavern, the two workers they had seen at the entrance earlier stumbled out, with their hands up, eyes streaming from the tear gas. Frost and Hicks easily apprehended and disarmed them, pulling them to the ground and securing their hands and feet.

While the two men were being apprehended, Hudson used his infrared visor to scan the area for an access point to the power on site. He quickly discovered an electrical panel concealed behind a stack of empty shipping crates near the entrance. He knocked the crates aside and pulled off the panel cover.

"Preparing to kill power. Hope no one's afraid of the dark."

"Get ready with night vision, team," interjected Apone.

From his tech kit, Hudson pulled out a microchip switch and clipped it on to the main power line and clicked off the switch. Above them, the lights instantly snapped off and the expansive space went dark.

Hudson looked at the tunnels ahead of them, his eyes adjusting to the night vision when suddenly, there was a loud explosion in the distance behind them and he knew one of the ships had been destroyed.

"Ferro, Spunkmeyer, come in!" Hicks said quickly into his headset. Hudson could feel everyone holding their breath during the silence that followed. "Ferro, are you guys still with us?!"

"Affirmative, Hicks," came Ferro's voice, "We just kicked some serious aeronautical ass,"

"Good work Ferro," said Apone. "Okay people, focus. Divide and conquer time, just like we planned!"

Three tunnels, nine crew members. They divided themselves strategically, keeping squads the same, save for Hudson, Karim and Hicks who formed an interim third squad. The two squads with smart guns were assigned to the east and west tunnels, Vasquez heading up the east tunnel with Apone and Crowe, while Drake, Dietrich and Frost took the west.

Hudson walked cautiously, entering the centre tunnel with Hicks and Karim, his attention divided between his surroundings and the monitor of the transmitter. He analyzed the infrared image. "Looking good so far," he said, not reading any movement close by. Initiating sonic frequency interference."

On the transmitter, he quickly switched to sonic frequency mode, put an earpiece into his right ear and plugged it into the device, his crew's communication now in his left ear, his enemies' in the right. The team was silent as he listened to the communications of the opposition. The voices were erratic, aware that they were under siege.

Hudson keyed a code into the monitor to transmit a frequency to jam the signal for enemy's communications. If the transmitter interference was successful, he would be able to still hear all attempted communications from the targets, but they wouldn't be able to hear each other.

In his right ear, Hudson listened to voices that he didn't recognize, struggling to communicate. Among them was a particularly chilling message.

"They're in the tunnels!" a man's voice crackled through the earpiece. "Walter, are you hearing me? Meet us in tunnel one, we're sticking together, going to tear 'em up! Pick 'em off one by one! Walter, come in."

The words made the hair on the back of Hudson's neck stand up. Switching back into infrared mode on his monitor, he could see a faint indication of people ahead, maybe twelve of them, now organized and beginning to move down the tunnel to their left where Drake, Dietrich and Frost were.

"Visualizing targets heading down west tunnel," Hudson said into the radio. "A dozen of them, suspected to be heavily armed. Drake, Dietrich, Frost do you copy?"

When there was no reply, Hudson spoke more urgently into the headset, "Dietrich, Drake, Frost, do you read?" He could see them in infrared, still moving forward. "Can they hear me?" Hudson asked Hicks and his face looked wary as he shook his head to say that he didn't think so.

"Shit," said Hudson. "The jammed signal must have screwed up their headsets too," he said to Hicks, shaking his head, his heart pounding under the stress. "Apone, Vasquez, Crowe, how do you read?"

Again, there was no answer.

"Maybe they can hear us, we can't hear them," offered Karim.

"They didn't hear, they're all still moving," said Hicks. Even using their infrared visors, they could see to each side of them, three blurry shapes of warm colours through the greyness of the rock wall; the two crews continuing to move forward.

"Twelve targets in west tunnel, and more coming, reading fifteen or so now," Hudson updated, nervously watching the monitor. "Targets heavily armed, heading toward Drake, Dietrich, Frost! Communications seem to be down for east and west squad. Does anyone copy?!"

Hudson rekeyed the program into the transmitter, hoping to unjam the signal, recover communication with their teammates, but he knew the disruption was not something that could be easily undone.

Hudson's mind raced as he struggled to think of what to do. The odds that Drake, Dietrich and Frost would survive a shoot-out against fifteen combatants did not feel promising.

Looking to his left, he could see the three of his teammates' heat signatures in the adjacent tunnel and it was frustrating to feel that they were so close, likely only divided by a few feet of rock, yet he couldn't get to them. As the thought came into his head, Hudson turned on his shoulder lamp and pointed it towards the wall, frantically searching it, doubling back about ten meters until he found what he was looking for.

"Hudson?" Hicks questioned into the radio, but Hudson had already pulled out his pulse rifle and began firing at the wall of the tunnel.

Hicks and Karim were next to Hudson in an instant.

"Hudson, what the hell are you—" began Karim, but Hicks seemed to understand Hudson's idea and had also begun firing his pulse rifle, and eventually Karim followed his lead. At the receiving end of their rifle fire was a blockade, something Hudson suspected was a filled-in access point between the two tunnels.

The fired rounds gouged away at the concrete of the blockade, dusty debris falling away in chunks. But the method wasn't working fast enough and they ran the risk of depleting their ammunition. Through his night vision visor, Hudson could barely see the infrared forms of their crewmates as they continued moving forward through the tunnel. It wouldn't be long now before they would be encountering the enemy. They were running out of time.

Hudson held his hand up for the others to stop shooting and went over to the wall, taking out a grenade.

"Whoa, that is a bad idea," said Karim. "For the record—bad, bad idea."

"Then you'd better run and hit the deck real quick," replied Hudson.

"Christ, Hudson," said Hicks and he gave an exasperated laugh at Hudson's impulsiveness. Then he grabbed Karim by the arm and they bolted down the tunnel in search of cover.

Hudson jammed the grenade into a crevice toward the bottom of the wall that was created by the gunfire. He pushed it in, trigger button end first so that it was held down in the process. A faint charging sound told him the grenade was engaged and he got to his feet and ran, following Hicks and Karim. There was little to hide behind in the tunnels, but a dip in one side of the wall gave them a small amount of protection and Hicks and Karim now leaned against the wall, preparing themselves for the blast.

Hudson had just about made it to them, when the grenade went off and he was knocked off his feet. His ears rang and he laid on the ground for a moment until Hicks was helping him up. He quickly checked his monitor and saw that the infrared forms on the screen were now closing in on their crewmates. On cue, he could hear gunfire echoing from the tunnel beside them and he knew they were engaging with the enemy.

"Hurry!" he said urgently and the three of them ran towards the wall where the grenade blast had opened a decent sized hole. He could hear the gunfire more clearly as he approached, and he knew that they had succeeded in creating a breach, unblocking the cross-passage between the two tunnels.

Hudson drudged through the surrounding debris and began to crawl through the opening. Through his visor, he could see someone in infrared moving towards the other side of the breach, and as he crawled through and came out the other side, Frost was against the tunnel wall, pointing his rifle at Hudson's face.

"Are you serious man, I nearly shot you!" yelled Frost.

"Thought you'd be happy to see the rescue team!" Hudson replied, grinning briefly before he heard the intensity of the gunfire.

"Get up quick, things are getting bad," Frost said as he quickly helped Hudson to his feet, and they moved ahead and pulled in close to the tunnel wall, where the uneven surface dipped in and provided a small bit of cover. Hudson had already turned off his shoulder lamp so that they might go unnoticed.

Dietrich and Drake were in front of them, pressed up against opposite sides of the tunnel. They each fired at the enemy ahead, both of them barely sheltered by a small amount of rocky ledge.

His surroundings suddenly felt dangerously chaotic and Hudson's pulse quickened, sweat dripping from his face as he stood against the wall as Frost aimed and fired at long range. Ahead, numerous beams of light danced around—flashlights attached to their enemies' guns. While the enemy had the advantage in numbers, they didn't have night vision and the light not only gave away their positions, but also their points of target. However, they also had an impressive arsenal of weapons and they knew how to use them.

"Things are pretty hairy in here guys, be on alert," Hudson said to Hicks and Karim through his headset as they now moved through the breach.

Behind him, he could sense that Hicks was coming out of the passage and was now assessing the situation. "Hudson, let's get our crew and fall back to the centre tunnel," said Hicks into his headset.

"We're going to need to get closer," said Frost, not privy to the radio communications.

"No dice, Frosty, orders are to fall back," Hudson replied, as Hicks moved towards them and began directing Frost to retreat.

The three of them were bunched up now; easy targets. In an attempt to spread out and give the other two space, Hudson crouched down low and swiftly ran forward, staying as close to the wall as possible. Gunfire whizzed past his head.

Suddenly, Hudson saw an object careening towards him and he ducked to avoid it.

"Grenade, grenade!" Hudson yelled into the headset as the grenade rolled on the ground for a short distance before exploding, not far from the passage entrance. He felt the shockwave of the explosion and saw Dietrich spin around, surprised at the impact, but also the sight of Hudson in the tunnel behind her.

"Frost, Hicks!" Hudson shouted fearfully, hoping they had made it through passage before the grenade had gone off. "Hicks, come in!" He said over the radio. "Karim, talk to me!"

There was another explosion as Dietrich shot a grenade towards the enemy in retribution.

"Frost and Hicks made it back to the centre tunnel!" Karim answered, but Hudson worried about what condition they had made it back in.

"Okay, copy Karim. Listen, stay put, I'm going to get Dietrich and Drake and pull them back!" Hunched down to avoid the spray of gunfire, Hudson ran forward to Dietrich and crouched in close behind her. He touched her back and she turned to look at him, her gun still pointed forward.

"Come on! There's a passage twenty metres back!" yelled Hudson through his face mask. It was hard to even hear himself amongst the gunfire.

"Drake's been hit! I'm down to my last twenty rounds!" she yelled back to him as she continued to fire.

Hudson glanced over at Drake on the opposite side of the tunnel. It was hard to visualize his condition through this infrared visor, but he could see that Drake was firing his gun from an awkward seated position and Hudson suspected he had gotten shot in the leg.

"Dietrich, get back now, I'll get Drake," he said insistently as her ammunition counter fell to zero. Hudson took over her spot and fired several shots ahead at a target and Dietrich quickly glanced backward, gauging the distance to the passage.

"Don't be a hero," she said to him. "If you die, I'll kill you." She squeezed his arm quickly before she turned and sprinted to the passage, staying close to the tunnel wall.

Hudson aimed his pulse rifle, firing at the enemy. Glancing back, he could see Dietrich disappearing through the passage and he felt relieved knowing she had made it out. As his ammunition counter began reading dangerously low numbers, Hudson began to be more selective with his firing. He breathed slowly, trying to think strategically about his shots, trying to steady his hands and aim well. He focused on what he needed to do: get to Drake and get him out safe.

As the digital display indicated he was down to his last five rounds, he watched as two more of his targets fell to the ground. Hudson felt a surge of hope as the sound of gunfire dropped off to just a couple streams of fire. Two grenades were left in the magazine of the underbarrel grenade launcher of his M41A and he slid the pump action and fired one, and then the other, at the remaining targets.

After the accompanying explosions, there was silence. Hudson pointed his gun at the expanse of tunnel in front of him, but couldn't see any movement. Then he pulled himself up and quickly ran over to Drake.

Even in infrared, Drake looked worse for wear. He could see a gunshot wound to Drake's right thigh, a significant amount of blood.

"Time to go buddy, how do you wanna do this?" Hudson said crouching next to Drake. He glanced forward nervously, still anxious of possible threats. Drake just grunted, but gave Hudson his arm, and Hudson slung it around his shoulder, hoisting Drake to his feet with considerable effort.

Drake yelled in pain as he took his first step, putting weight on his leg. As they began a slow but steady stride toward the passage, Hudson thought he saw movement out of his peripheral vision. He whipped his head around, but couldn't see anything.

"Let's pick it up a notch, c'mon Drake, just a little farther," Hudson said, his heart somehow racing more now than it had been during the shootout. He had a bad feeling that he had seen someone moving.

They were almost in the clear. Hudson was lowering Drake down so he could climb through the passage, when it happened. Hudson heard three bangs in quick succession, echoing loudly through the tunnel.

He wasn't even surprised when he felt each one pierce his armour.

.

He woke up to discomfort, lying on a hard bed, an IV just one of several tubes and wires connecting him to the medical equipment of the Sulaco. His neck was stiff, almost locked to one side and he presumed he had been lying that way for hours. He tried to lift his head to turn it to the other side, stretch his neck, but he could barely manage the motion.

Hudson couldn't feel his back at all, and he worried that it had been blown off by a grenade. He was also feeling extremely loopy, so the notion of having lost his entire back in combat made sense in his mind for several minutes before he groggily pieced together what had actually happened.

He didn't remember the pain of getting hit as much as he remembered the chaos that had followed: Drake yelling in surprise, Dietrich applying pressure and telling him it was going to be okay, orders being shouted amongst the crew. Then darkness, the feeling of flying, and like no time had passed until this very moment.

"Hudson," said a voice, and Dietrich came into view. "How do you feel?"

"Like my back is missing," he replied in a raspy voice.

"Okay good," she said, "I guess that means you can't feel too much."

Hudson tried to prop himself up, but he was weak, and his muscles lacked the strength to move himself. The part of his torso that he could feel felt like it had been beaten with a club. The numbness in his back was off-putting, making him feel thin and strangely concave.

"This must be how a turtle feels when he's not wearing his shell."

Dietrich suppressed a regretful laugh. "In other words, too much morphine. Got it," she said in response to the nonsensical comment. But as he continued to try to move, she gently placed her hands on his chest and there was concern on her face. "Take it easy," she said, "You might not be able to feel it now, but you were shot three times in the back. You had a collapsed lung, we needed to put in a chest tube."

"Did Drake make it out?" Hudson asked weakly.

"Yeah, he's going to be okay, he's right here sleeping beside you," Dietrich said, and Hudson struggled to turn his head to see his friend. Drake's thigh was bandaged with a thick mound of gauze, his chest rising and falling as he slept.

"The target made a run for it after she shot you, but we tracked her down and she surrendered."

"And the rest of the crew?" Hudson asked, suddenly concerned as he remembered the grenade landing close to Frost and Hicks.

"Everyone's okay. Hicks got away with just a concussion; he was pretty lucky. So were you," said Dietrich with a frown. She pulled up a chair and sat close to him and placed her hand on his wrist. "You know, everyone's saying you're the reason we all made it out alive," Dietrich said quietly, her eyes shining with sincerity. "There was a moment there when I thought Drake and Frost and I were going to die in that tunnel. I know that I'm only here now because of you."

"I'm sure that's not true," he said, his voice quiet. The feeling of guilt was heavy in his chest. "I somehow fucked up the radio communications, no one could hear each other. If I could have—if I hadn't—"

"Hey," said Dietrich rubbing his arm, trying to keep him from getting worked up. "You put your life on the line for us," she replied adamantly.

Hudson attempted a shrug, "Wasn't a big deal." But he was suddenly surprised to see tears in her eyes.

"Fuck, Hudson. Do you even know how much your life matters?" she said, shaking her head as she kneaded his wrist in her hand. Tears dropped down either side of her face. "It matters to_ me_." Without warning, she leaned forward and kissed him, her hand moving up to rest softly on his cheek.

But after a moment, Dietrich pulled away and sighed in frustration, wiping the tears from her face. "I'm sorry, that was so stupid of me. This is the last thing you need right now."

"It's okay, don't be sorry," said Hudson gently. He reached out with effort and took her hand. He thought about the night when he had knocked on her door. At the time, just knowing that he had someone that he could confide in might have made all the difference. "Dee, you've been there for me these past weeks. I don't think I'd be alive now if it wasn't for _you_."

New tears fell down Dietrich's face as she squeezed his hand in both of hers. "Rest, okay?" she struggled to say, and she got up, letting go of his hand.

.

It would be another couple of days before Hudson would be cleared to leave the medical bay. When he was, Dietrich was there to accompany him, holding his arm, walking him slowly down the corridor. She helped him get settled into the bed in his room, making frequent visits to look after him, bringing him food and painkillers and changing his bandages.

A few days after he was released, Dietrich sat with him on his bed, taping a fresh patch of gauze over the sutured incision from his chest tube.

Hudson watched her. He felt indebted to her, all she had done for him. He reached up and touched her face, brushing her cheek lightly with his thumb and her brown eyes looked back at him longingly. Without a word, they came together in a kiss. He could feel how much she cared about him, her affection for him evident in the kiss, but also restrained and protective, careful not to hurt him.

Over the following weeks and months, Dietrich would often stay the night in his room, always sneaking out early the next morning before the others would wake and move about the corridor.

While his body recovered, his heart still felt numb and broken. But he felt like Dietrich was helping him move forward, helping him heal. It was nice not to have to feel so alone.

. . .

Two years ago, he and Dietrich had saved each other. Now, she was gone and that was it—their story together had come to an end.

Hudson felt the life leave Dietrich, the pulse in her wrist no longer detectable. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, he took a deep breath and returned Dietrich's hand to her side. Then, without looking back, he continued to move forward, in search of Newt.


	6. All or Nothing

As the elevator made its slow descent to ground level, Vasquez waited nervously for the doors to open. She closed her eyes and exhaled her tension, her hand grasping the folded piece of paper in her pocket that she had discovered only moments ago.

She had not even looked at it yet, just held it in her hand, recognizing the weight and feel of the familiar object, thankful that it had come back to her after such a long time out of her possession. She hoped it would bring luck to her now.

When the elevator stopped and opened to the outside, she was not as close to the landing field as she had hoped and from where she stood, the dropship was nowhere to be seen. As she tried to determine which direction to head towards, suddenly the thought occurred to her that Hicks, Ripley and Newt might have made it out already and left with Bishop in the dropship. It would have been easy for them to assume she and Gorman had both died in the blast and the thought that she may have just missed them by minutes felt excruciating.

But a sudden sound from above drew her eyes upward and she felt instantly relieved as she saw the dropship flying majestically towards her, its landing targeted at least fifty metres from where she stood. Immediately, she began limping in the direction it was headed.

By the time she approached the ship, her legs hurt so much that she was just about to drop to the ground when Bishop came running out of the ship.

He put his arm around her, helping her to walk the rest of the way. "I don't suppose you'd let me carry you back to the ship?" he asked her in a slightly ironic tone.

"Fuck no," she replied, managing a wry laugh.

"I didn't think so," the android responded astutely with a small smile. "You don't have to worry," he continued conversationally, "We'll get you fixed up." And his eyes met hers reassuringly and she felt her level of anxiety drop somewhat. Bishop had always been good at making everyone feel safe.

As he helped her up the ramp to the ship, she watched as Ripley turned her head in surprise at the sight of her. "Well I'll be damned," Ripley breathed.

She had been helping a badly-burned Hicks into a seated position and despite his condition he stared at her, his hand over one eye. "Holy shit, Vasquez!" He reacted, his voice husky.

Bishop assisted her across the deck of the fuselage, to the command chairs positioned towards the front of the hull and helped her into a chair a couple down from Hicks.

"Hey guys," she said, settling into the chair and it felt good to take weight off of her legs. Bishop had already left and was climbing up into the cockpit. In a matter of seconds, they took flight and she realized how close she had come to not making it onto the ship before they took off.

"We heard the explosion, we thought you were dead—" said Hicks, wincing.

"Just about," she replied somberly, "Gorman wasn't so lucky."

Ripley had moved to the cargo storage which contained the firearms and ammunition and was beginning to take guns off the rack. That was when Vasquez suddenly realized Newt was missing.

"Newt?" she asked in surprise.

There was a loud click as Ripley loaded a magazine into the pulse rifle with force.

"I'm going to get her back," said Ripley resolutely.

. . .

In 2172, after almost three years of training and assisting with various marine forces on Earth, Vasquez and Drake were deployed on their first real colonial mission with the USCM.

During infantry training, Vasquez and Drake had excelled at smartgun training and had both been selected as the top two gunmen in their class. They had grown closer because of the experience; best friends, just as they had been in juvie.

They had been taught everything the Marine Corps felt they needed to know about combat, infantry, extraterrestrial species, and the fabric of spacetime, but now they were going to get to experience it all for themselves.

They weren't yet assigned to a battalion, but rather temporarily placed into an existing team: First Battalion Delta, which required auxiliary gunners for a specialty emergency mission.

Vasquez felt sick for a full day after she was taken out of cryo and woke up aboard the Argo, the first Conestoga Class Starship she had ever been on. That night, as they travelled through the Tau Ceti system to get to their destination for the morning, she laid in her room feeling ill and nervous.

In their briefing earlier that night, their Lieutenant had spared no detail when it came to informing them about the potential dangers of their upcoming mission, and now the combination of cryo side effects and apprehension felt nauseating.

Although everyone had gone to bed promptly that night in preparation for their early wake up the next morning, there was a knock on her door.

Vasquez reluctantly moved from her bed and got to her feet. She opened the door to Drake, standing in the hall, holding a bottle and a couple mugs.

"I brought medicine," he said, holding up the bottle and she could see it was whiskey.

She cringed and left the door open for him to enter, sulking back to her bed and collapsing into the mattress.

"That bad, huh?" He asked and she responded with a grunt as he closed the door and then sat on the bed beside her. He poured some whiskey into one of the mugs and held one towards her. When she just stared at it unenthusiastically, he shook the contents slightly and she finally reached out and took it.

"You know, the Irish swear by whiskey for stomach aches," said Drake.

"I'm not Irish, in case you haven't noticed," she said, looking down at the whiskey in distaste. "And it's more than just a stomach ache."

"Oh yeah?" Drake asked with concern and he set down the bottle beside the bed and moved towards her. He carefully took back the mug of whiskey he had given her so that he wouldn't spill it as he laid down next to her on the bed.

He placed his hand on her forehead to check for a temperature and then slid it through her short hair, tucking a small piece behind her ear. "What's going on, Vaz?"

She was silent, unsure how to communicate to her best friend that in addition to her stomach hurting and her head throbbing, she felt nauseated and nervous about the following day, worried that one of them would die on their first real mission.

"I feel like…" she began. His blue eyes looked back at her intently. His lips and dimpled chin were poised in a brooding look of concern. In her head, she finished the thought: _I want you to kiss me_.

After four years of friendship, a slow-burning romantic tension had developed between her and Drake. They had been subtly flirting with each other more often these days, making excuses to get close to one another: Vasquez adjusting Drake's body armour before combat practice, Drake brushing a non-existent eyelash off her cheek.

Drake watched her expectantly, waiting for her to continue her sentence.

"I feel like… that whiskey might actually help," she eventually said, frustrated at herself for chickening out.

Drake laughed, his face brightening a bit. "Thought we tried that already," he said, passing the mug of whiskey back to her and she took a swig, ignoring the burn of alcohol down her throat. She hoped it would at least settle her nerves a bit.

Drake swigged back a shot of his own and gazed at her as she finished what was in her mug. "I should let you get some sleep," he said after a while, but he hesitated and didn't get up from her bed. "I guess I just wanted to come by and see you tonight. You know, to see how you were feeling, but also because… well, who knows what might happen tomorrow." In Drake's voice she could hear nervousness and she suddenly realized she wasn't alone in feeling the way she did.

Vasquez sat up, breathing his name as she did—she needed to say something before he got up to leave. She felt her face suddenly flush, wondering if there was any possibility it was because of the whiskey. She took his hand and moved in towards him, suddenly too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

Without hesitation, Drake read her body language and moved the rest of the way toward her, his hand gently raising her chin up and then they were engaged in an impassioned kiss.

She wondered how often they each thought about what this moment would be like, whether they both knew it was inevitably going to happen one day. She wondered whether Drake knew when he made the decision to knock on her door that evening.

Vasquez shifted her body closer to Drake's and his arms came around her in an embrace. Her mind went blank and all she knew was that this felt good, comfortable and safe as they laid down on the bed together. Drake moved on top of her, kissing her deeply as she wrapped her arms around his muscular shoulders.

But Vasquez's head began to throb again, and as she moved her hand to her head, Drake noticed her expression. He pulled back with a noise of sympathy, kissing her on the forehead. The gesture felt even more intimate than their kiss on the lips or the closeness of their bodies.

"You need rest," he said decisively. "You gotta sleep off these cryo effects so you can be in good shape tomorrow." He paused for a moment, their bodies still pressed together and she knew that neither of them wanted to part. While she didn't want him to leave, she knew he was right about needing a good night's sleep and she doubted the level of restraint they would have if he stayed any longer.

"You think when we both come back from this mission, we could pick up from where we left off tonight?" he asked her.

She nodded slowly. "I think we could do that."

.

Vasquez thought she was going to die before they even reached the colony of LV-201 on the exoplanet Tau Ceti f. She had done simulations of drops before, but never the real thing and she suddenly felt untrusting of every bit of engineering that held the ship together.

During their descent, Drake slipped his hand in hers and she held onto it tightly. It took her a moment to realize that there was something between their hands: a folded piece of paper. Curious, she took her hand away from Drake's and unfolded the note.

On the square piece of paper was a rough drawing of what she could only assume was supposed to be her, purposely exaggerated, shooting a gun. Below the drawing in Drake's large and untidy handwriting it said 'Congratulations on being awesome and kicking ass!'

Drake was watching her. "I was going to give it to you after the mission, but it looked like you could use it now."

She smiled at him and folded the paper and put it back in her pocket, temporarily forgetting about the turbulence.

When the dropship landed on the surface of Tau Ceti f, Sergeant Matteo Costa stood up, "That wasn't so bad, was it?" he said spiritedly.

"Yeah, smooth as toast," Vasquez muttered to Drake. But as soon as she spoke, the dropship powered down and her comment could be heard by everyone. Sergeant Costa turned to her, a slightly surprised look on his face.

"Sir," she added with embarrassment as Costa stared at her.

To her surprise, he broke out into laughter and it seemed genuine. "I like that, I'll have to remember that one."

Costa looked intimidating to anyone who first met him. The man was tall and heavily-built with olive skin and dark hair that was greying around the temples. He had a fairly substantial beard, something highly unusual for a Sergeant in the Marine Corps, and it too was flecked with grey.

She had heard stories about him and his unconventional leadership style, how he wasn't afraid to challenge the traditional methods of the USCM. She wondered if the beard also had something to do with that.

Despite the negative rumours she had heard about him being a hard ass and a shit-disturber, he didn't come across that way. The day earlier, he seemed to go out of his way to welcome her and Drake and make them feel comfortable, and at dinner, he even showed them pictures of his wife and kids. From what she saw of him so far, he seemed well-respected by the team, charismatic and disarmingly pleasant.

"Okay now crew," Costa continued, pacing in front of them. "We've been told this colony has been evacuated, but due to the suddenness of the invasion, not all civilians have been accounted for, so I want everyone to be hyper-vigilant of any signs of remaining colonists. Don't just go shooting at anything that moves, there could be civilians sheltering in place, looters, people's pets and livestock. Let's have no casualties other than the target we've been sent here to eliminate."

Everyone was standing now, seemingly out of respect, and Vasquez and Drake followed suit and stood also.

"We'll follow the route that we discussed, heading east into the built-up part of the colony where there have been the most sightings of the target. From there, we should be able to spot—"

A great bang reverberated against the hull and the eyes of the entire team went to the source of the noise. Piercing through the thick metal shell of the dropship was a dagger-like projectile, protruding in towards them, conical and slightly curved. Then the dagger began to move and withdrew itself, before it hit with another bang and impaled itself in the ship again.

"Scratch that, think we found it," said Costa calmly and nodded to Corporal Breville beside him.

"Move out, we're under attack!" yelled Breville as they all swiftly grabbed their guns and fled from the dropship.

It was daylight on Tau Ceti f, but the far distance from the closest star meant that the daytime sky was dark and grey. They all turned on their lights as they exited the dropship and as they got into formation, they looked up to a sudden movement.

An alien stood before them, as plain as anything she had ever witnessed with her own eyes. It looked like a scorpion, but it was as big as the dropship. Its movements were agile, erratic and hard to predict. It wielded large threatening-looking claws and a spiked tail. It made an unsettling clicking sound as it scuttled towards them.

Costa fired the first shot, quickly followed by Vasquez and Drake. As the two gunners, her and Drake were in front, flanked by the rest of the gun team, the remainder of riflemen behind them. The others began firing and adrenaline pumped through her veins as her finger held the trigger and the automatic weapon fired continuously. As the rounds connected with the enormous creature, it recoiled slightly but did not appear to cause any visible damage.

Then, it abruptly charged forward. The spiked tail swiped towards them and they scattered, a few of them narrowly missing the hit. Their formation disrupted, the team tried to regroup so that they could advance again.

Drake had been forced to the side of the target during the fray and as he took aim again and fired his smartgun, the giant bug turned its back suddenly and the rounds ricocheted off the hard shell and back towards him.

Out of the corner of her eye, Vasquez saw Drake get knocked off his feet by the impact and she spun around to see him on the ground, struggling to get back up. He swayed unsteadily, dazed and unable to get past kneeling on all fours. Drake had a hand pressed to his face, blood running through his fingers into the dusty soil.

Instantly, she knew it was bad. "Oh shit!" she exclaimed, and she called his name as she continued shooting, making her way closer. She knelt down in front of him, her hands on him, letting him know she was there. She set her smart gun on the ground, but kept her eyes glancing upward, peeled for incoming danger. She took the safety off the pistol she kept in her chest holster in case she needed to draw it quickly.

"Hold still Drake, just let me see," she coaxed, pulling out a tourniquet cloth she had in her cargo pants.

Drake grunted and took his hand away from his face and held her shoulder to steady himself. She tilted his head up and blood ran down the side of his face. She could see that at least two pieces of ricocheting bullet had hit him in the left side of the face, one of them tearing a decent chunk of flesh from his cheek next to his eye, where she could see white from the exposed orbital bone. The eye itself looked alright and she told him that in an attempt to comfort him, hoping she sounded more calm than she felt. She pressed the cloth to his face, staying ever vigilant of their surroundings.

As the creature turned and began moving away, the rest of the team followed in pursuit as it headed towards the deserted alleyways between colony structures and empty buildings. Only the field medic, Forrier, ran towards her and Drake.

"I'll take it from here, you go help the others," Forrier said adamantly and she knew she was in no position to argue with him.

"You're gonna be okay Drake," she told him as Forrier replaced her hand with his, holding pressure on the wound. She squeezed Drake's hands and he responded with a dazed nod as she stood up to follow the others. She had to trust that he would be alright.

Vasquez picked up her smart gun and regained her focus, following the sound of gunfire. But as she continued to run deeper into the maze of alleyways, her ears became unreliable as the sound played tricks, the crack of gunshots funneling between buildings and bouncing off of structures.

She was suddenly reminded of Ciudad Juárez when she and Carmen were pursued by Martina Diaz and her gang, feeling anxious and disoriented, not knowing what direction the others would emerge from.

Vasquez stopped where she was, trying to listen for clues and make sense of what she was hearing.

Clearer sound came from ahead of her, towards an open space where several alleyways converged. As she ran in that direction, in front of her, the scorpion tail came into view, the creature furiously clicking its claws as it moved backwards into the clearing, evidently being forced back by the team's gunfire.

She was about to aim and take a clear shot, when the alien whipped its tail, hitting something out of the air. As the object bounced down the alley in her direction, her brain said, _grenade_, her mouth said, "Fuck," she scrambled to get out of the way as the explosion detonated.

The others came into view as she laid on the ground and Sergeant Costa ran towards her yelling her name. Her hearing sounded hollow from the blast and she felt a bit dizzy. Her arm hurt and she looked down to see she had fallen on a sharp piece of metal, which stuck out of her bicep. Without overthinking it, she hastily pulled it out, doing her best to ignore the pain and the blood sliding down her arm as Costa came up beside her.

"Sorry Vasquez," he said to her, genuinely apologetic. "Didn't think he'd take a swing at that one. Was my best curve ball," he said.

"Some _pinch hitter_," she replied.

Costa gave a hearty laugh. "Well you must not have hit your head too hard," he said. "You're still quick as a whip." He helped her up and handed her M56 back to her and they jogged back towards the rest of the crew.

She could see that the team was starting to look a bit tired and roughed-up. One of the first squad rifle team, Private Wilson was limping, but still firing as she continued forward.

Costa fired his pulse rifle and stopped to reload. "The exoskeleton is thick," he mused aloud. "Most of our rounds are just bouncing off."

"How about trying the grenade launcher again, Sarge?" Vasquez offered, firing her gun empty as well and pulling out a new mag. She knew Sergeant Costa was trying to work the problem, she felt privileged that he was seeking her input.

"After that last one nearly killed you?" he shook his head. "Too dangerous with the tail. It's already learned that it can hit them back towards us."

A sudden thought came to Vasquez's mind as she considered their earlier baseball metaphors. "So give it a _grounder_, it's harder to field," she said looking up at him. "Don't shoot the grenade, roll it. Blast the bastard from underneath."

Costa's eyes widened as he considered the idea and from his silence she knew he was planning it out in his head. "You an Astros fan, Vasquez?"

"Rangers, Sir," she replied.

"Good answer."

Costa moved forward with composure, walking swiftly forward, drawing a grenade from his pant pocket. It was almost like witnessing a movie scene in slow motion as he moved calmly towards the side of the target in a calculated arc. The grenade in one hand, he held his pulse rifle in the other, large muscles easily keeping the gun aimed and steady as he held the grip towards the back of the gun. Then he confidently activated the grenade, aimed low and released it from his hand. The grenade rolled perfectly along the pavement, unhindered by debris as it rolled beneath the elevated body of the arachnoid. As soon as he knew his aim was on point, Costa yelled to the team, "Grenade! Everybody get back!" in his clear, deep voice and then he expertly fired his pulse rifle single-handedly as he turned and ran to get away from the blast.

It was easily one of the coolest things she had ever witnessed.

In another second, the grenade exploded underneath its intended target and blew a significant hole in the underside of the alien. It screeched and clicked, legs giving way and falling to the ground, struggling for a moment before its movements slowed and it appeared dead.

"Whooo!" Costa yelled triumphantly. "Everyone alright?!" And when everyone seemed okay, a few of them echoing Costa with a cheer, he yelled again in triumph, slung his pulse rifle deftly around his shoulder and gave Vasquez a jubilant two-hand low five. "Awesome thinking Vasquez!"

She was quickly developing a great deal of admiration for Costa. His relaxed and engaging leadership style, optimism and undeniable skill in combat—there was so much she wanted to learn from him. Hell, she wanted to be him.

Vasquez smiled at his praise. Although she didn't feel like she had done anything too significant, in Costa's mind she had and that made her feel proud.

But as they celebrated, she thought of Drake. She wondered how he was doing, and wished he could have been there to to share in their first real victory.

.

Vasquez and the team stayed for another couple hours to secure the area before they headed back to the Argo in the dropship, so it felt like ages by the time they finally got back and she was able to check on Drake.

But when she got to the medical bay, Drake wasn't there. Forrier informed her that he had stitched up Drake and requested he stay for night, but Drake had insisted on leaving.

So Vasquez went to Drake's room and knocked on his door. And after multiple knocks and no answer, her mind cycled through a number of worrying scenarios. Fearing he had passed out and was lying unconscious on his bedroom floor, she tried the door. When it opened to an empty room, she was puzzled.

Walking down the hall, she caught up with Costa. "Hey Sarge, have you seen Drake?"

"Saw him heading to the gym, the crazy bastard," he said, shaking his head. "Really good work today Vasquez. Hell of a first day! Now, I want you to go see Forrier about that arm, okay?" he said and she nodded.

"I will. Thanks Sarge," she said, but as Costa continued down the hall, she frowned and turned towards the gym, her confusion mounting.

When she opened the door to the gym, Drake was bench pressing a substantial amount of weight. His left eye was bandaged, but he seemed unhindered by it.

Vasquez walked up behind him. "You should really have a spotter, you know," she said, looking down at his bandaged face, and she helped guide the bar up and back into the rack.

"You're back," he said happily, catching his breath as he sat up.

"Are you alright?" She asked him in confusion. "What the hell are you doing here right now?"

"I feel great Vaz," he said animatedly, "I really do." And he pulled her toward him and she sat on the bench next to him.

"Is your eye okay?" she asked him in concern. "What did Forrier say?"

"Orbital fracture, but he says it'll be fine," Drake said optimistically. "Take a look, you gotta see this," he said and he began pulling at the bandage on his face.

"Drake, don't. What the hell?" she said, her hand trying to stop him from pulling his bandage off.

"It's fine," he protested, but when she batted his hand away, he said, "Okay, you do it, just take a look."

She shook her head at his stubbornness. Begrudgingly, she began to peel up one side of the bandage, carefully pulling back the tape from his cheek and lifting up the gauze.

His eye was nearly swollen shut. A long row of stitches came down the side of his cheek. Under the corner of his eye, at the top of his cheekbone was a smaller cluster of stitches where the other bullet fragment had hit.

"Notice anything?"

"Might take a while to get back to your pretty self."

"The tattoo, Vaz."

It was hard to tell because of the swelling and dried blood around the stitches, but she could see that the stitches on his cheekbone fell around the spot where his teardrop tattoo had been.

Like her own tattoo, his was to commemorate the life he had taken.

"It's been erased," he said with ardency. "What are the chances that I would have gotten hit exactly where the tattoo had been? And the scorpion, a symbol of_ transformation__,_" he continued. "I know it's a sign, Vaz... I don't have to repent for my crime anymore, I've been forgiven."

As much as she could see the weight that had been lifted off of him by the epiphany, something didn't sit well with her. She gently placed the bandage back on his face.

"Your shots ricocheted, Drake. Where they hit was just a coincidence," she said coldly and she knew she was disappointing him with her response.

"Are you serious?" he asked her, visibly upset. "How can you think that?"

"Am _I_ serious?" she laughed, "You accidentally shoot yourself in the face and you take it as a sign that you're suddenly off the hook?" Knowing how harsh her words sounded, she added, "Look, I'm sorry, I just don't see it that way... Come on, get out of here and go get some rest, you should be taking it easy right now."

Drake just frowned at her and Vasquez sighed, knowing she couldn't undo the damage she had done. When she stood to leave, she saw him take note of her injured arm.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," she said turning away, "No fucking miracles here."

.

It went without saying that they wouldn't be picking things up from where they left off the night earlier. There was a strained awkwardness between them, reminiscent of the time during bootcamp when they had their first falling out.

Her and Drake had been offered light duty by Sergeant Costa, but refused it, both opting to take the dropship down to the colony each day to work with the team to finish the job.

But compared to the first few hours of their mission, the remaining work on the exoplanet was uneventful. They spent their time scouting the colony for any other potential threats, accompanying the colony's science team while they collected samples and studied the site for clues pertaining to the origins of the intruder.

But after several days of not talking, other than for work purposes, she began to feel regretful of the way she had talked to Drake, wondering why she couldn't just be happy for him.

Vasquez knew his story; he had never been afraid to talk about it. She knew that he had a rough upbringing, that he had run away from home as a young teen and joined a group of other nomadic youth, hitchhiking down into the southern states and living on the streets. When a girl he was travelling with was assaulted in the night by a rival group, Drake had found the boy who did it and beat him to death.

Drake never seemed to have a complicated relationship with his crime, always maintaining that his actions were justified. But she knew he must have felt some shame for what he did because of how the burden seemed to be lifted now.

As she thought about it more, she realized that there was a possibility that it was her own jealousy that was preventing her from being happy for Drake. She too wanted to feel free of her guilt, but she knew it would not be as simple for her.

That evening as she sat in her room, her eyes fell on the folded paper note that Drake had slipped into her pocket on the dropship that first day. She opened it and studied it for a while and it made her smile.

Taking out a pencil, she added to his drawing, her skill level just slightly better than his. She admired her work: a muscular cartoon Drake with his smartgun now joining the outline of her that he had drawn on the page. The tag line she kept the same, 'Congratulations on being awesome and kicking ass!'

Then she went down the hall and slipped it under his door.

.

The following day, Drake was in higher spirits. There seemed to be an unspoken forgiveness between them, and they sat together at breakfast, chatting pleasantly.

At some point during the meal, his hand rested on her leg under the table. She exhaled as his hand moved to her inner thigh suggestively and squeezed her leg.

For the entire day, the sexual tension between them mounted. She couldn't look at him without feeling a nervous sense of excitement, to the extent that she could barely stand to be around him. To the team it must have seemed that they were still arguing, unaware of the things he was whispering in her ear, or the way he subtly touched her when no one was looking.

That night, she paced in her room and when the knock on the door finally came, she pulled him inside and they began frantically taking off eachother's clothes, kissing passionately, the build-up from the day fueling their desire for one another. They were naked on the bed together within seconds of him being there.

She felt ready to take things to the next level with him and it played out just as she had imagined it would: their bodies trembling slightly with excitement, his rough hands sliding over her skin, moving her, taking control as he penetrated her. She revelled in the feeling.

It seemed like a blur as they moved together in a smooth cadence, Drake feeling her up and talking dirty, frenzied movements escalating until they eventually came in unison.

Then, it was all over.

As they laid together in her bed, Drake quickly fell asleep, but Vasquez stayed awake, staring up at the ceiling.

For a long time, she had been anticipating this moment with Drake, thinking that they might someday get to this point. But now that it had happened, she couldn't help but feel uncertain about it.

She worried about the next day, suddenly feeling like she wouldn't know how to act in front of him anymore. If she wanted to, could they ever just go back to being friends, or was that a choice taken away from her when they decided to go down this path?

The fact that Drake was gone when she woke up only contributed to her feeling of uncertainty, but when she saw him at breakfast, he greeted her jovially, and some of her reservations dissipated.

"Hey Vaz, they're talking about extending our stay with this group. Rumour is we'd be heading with them to Alpha Centauri to finish up the remainder of this deployment," he beamed at her. "Pretty cool, huh? I've always wanted to go there."

She smiled back at him in agreement. Then, when the team members around them got up to leave, he said to her quietly, "Sorry for skipping out on you this morning, thought I'd take the opportunity to sneak out before the others woke up. I just think we should try to be careful about getting caught. You know," he said easily.

Again she nodded to say she agreed and he smiled back at her, discreetly taking her hand beneath the table. She felt the feeling of paper in her hand and she didn't even have to look at it to know what it was.

.

Over time, the secret note had taken on a new meaning. The folded bit of paper continuously passed between them, each taking their turn to hang on to it and leave it somewhere for the other to find. It was an odd habit, but it was something only the two of them knew about; a quiet symbol of their support for each other, their unity in an environment where they couldn't always share feelings out loud.

For their first months aboard the Argo, Vasquez would find the folded square of paper in her pockets, slipped into her locker, or left under her pillow after Drake stayed the night. She would usually hang on to it for a few days, leave just enough time for him to forget about it and then slip it under his door or hide it somewhere in his room. Sometimes it would go days or weeks without being returned to the other, but whenever it turned up, it always felt like a nice surprise.

They were only intended to serve on First Battalion Delta Team for four months, but as her and Drake continually proved themselves to be valuable members of the team, Costa kept putting in requests to keep them on for longer.

Vasquez knew Costa enjoyed having her on the team. He had grown to become a mentor to her, someone who she respected and wanted to emulate. Not only did he teach her a great deal about combat, but he helped to hone her talents, showing her that she was resourceful and a critical thinker, and possessed a great deal of promise as a marine.

Once during combat practice, when Vasquez received an above average amount of praise from Costa, she could see Drake beginning to get annoyed and she wasn't sure if it was because he felt threatened by Costa or because he was jealous of the praise she was getting from him.

After practice, Drake was on his way out of the locker room when he handed her the folded paper square and said, "Think you really earned this today."

There was something in the way that he smirked that she knew there was more to the gesture than just a 'congratulations on being awesome', and she opened the note after he had left. On the drawing he had originally done of her, he had penciled in a tattoo on her arm that was in the shape of a heart. In the heart was the name Costa.

Instantly she laughed when she saw it, although she wasn't entirely sure whether Drake had meant it to be funny. Either way, she decided to retaliate.

On the drawing of him, she added angel wings and a halo: a blatant reference to their former argument about him being 'redeemed'. She shoved it through one of the slats of his locker, but as soon as she did, she wondered whether it had been a mistake, not certain if it would contribute to a new feud between them.

However, the next day at breakfast, the paper appeared when she lifted up her food tray in the mess hall, and she quickly pocketed it so she could open it out of view of the others. When she did, there were devil horns and a spiked tail added to the cartoon of her and she nodded at the fitting, although frankly obvious, counterstrike.

The tradition of adding to the note continued from there. While it began in the form of jabs at one another and included a couple unflattering speech bubbles, some of the additions could have been considered improvements to the original. When Vasquez covered up the nerdy glasses Drake had drawn on her by shading them into aviator sunglasses, she liked the look of it, so she generously gave Drake a pair too. Drake would often select an inspirational quote or motivational saying to add, whereas Vasquez opted for small drawings to fill the empty space: a pulse rifle, a scorpion, the iconic Parris Island footprints from bootcamp, a hand of cards, a teardrop crossed out by a scar.

For a while, everything felt right. She felt content with her routine, her work and the people she shared her life with. But after almost a year aboard the Argo, first within Tau Ceti, and then Alpha Centauri, they were told that they were being transferred to a more permanent battalion.

Vasquez was sorry to leave the Argo. The team had grown so comfortable with one another for the past twelve months and she felt an unexpectedly strong feeling of sadness as she and Drake said their goodbyes to the crew.

As she sat in silence aboard the shuttle, moving away from the Argo and toward their new life aboard the Sulaco, she wondered if what she was experiencing was the feeling of _homesickness_.

The new group seemed strange and more hostile compared to First Delta. Sergeant Apone was not as easy-going as Costa. He had high expectations, and her first sense of him was that he was short-tempered and difficult to impress.

It was a personnel-heavy mission, the Sulaco team consisting of around thirty crew members—more than twice as many as their former team. The larger crew made it feel less like they were part of a family and more like being back in bootcamp. It also meant sharing rooms.

She was roomed with Collette Ferro, a dropship pilot that already had several years of experience on her. As soon as she entered their sleeping quarters, Ferro glanced up at her and said, "You better not be some straight-laced, no-fun weirdo."

Vasquez stared her down. "You better not be some stuck-up, tight-ass white girl."

Ferro laughed instantly, and said, "You'll do," and Vasquez knew they would get along.

Vasquez and Drake had been introduced to most of their new team members at dinner on their first night there, but it was the following day of combat practice that brought them all quite a bit closer.

Apone ran a tight ship. He wasn't one to allow comradery develop naturally if there was a training exercise that could expedite it, or at least make it more awkward. Thus, the first full day she spent with Second Battalion Bravo team, she spent grappling with them.

Vasquez suspected Apone had also selected the high-contact training exercise to get a sense of the abilities of her and Drake and the several other new recruits that had recently joined them.

For the majority of the day, they paired off, practiced moves and sparred with each other, select pairs getting floor time to face-off in front of the rest of the team.

When Vasquez was selected for a grappling match against a marine named Private Hawkins, Vasquez did not feel worried. Hawkins seemed pleasant, yet fiercely competitive. She was muscular and athletic, but her movements were slow and lacked creativity, so Vasquez pinned her easily. Even when Apone told Vasquez to release Hawkins and let her have another try, Vasquez took her down again, performing an easy armbar, forcing Hawkins to tap out.

Feeling triumphant, Vasquez turned to Apone on a whim and asked, "Who you got for me next, Sarge?" She knew it was arrogant, but it seemed to pay off because Apone laughed and looked pleasantly surprised.

"Dealer's choice," he said with a sweeping gesture of his hand that indicated to anyone on the crew. A confirming nod of Apone's head showed her that he was serious: he wanted her to pick anyone from the team and challenge them to go against her.

As Vasquez scanned the group, she overheard a voice say, "This oughta be good," and her eyes fell on the one who said it: a smug-looking marine, whose name she had forgotten. He was dark-haired and lean and stood with his arms crossed, sleeves cut short to show off muscles that she considered pretty average for a marine. But it was the cocky grin he wore that made her select him. She had an urge to knock it off his face.

"This one," she said.

Apone immediately began laughing again. "You're up Hudson!"

Private Hudson looked taken aback, the grin fading a bit. "I'm not fighting a girl, sir," he protested.

Apone looked amused, "You afraid you're gonna lose? Vasquez picked you, she obviously doesn't see you as a threat."

Hudson looked insulted at the Sergeant's words. He frowned and reluctantly stepped forward onto the mat with Vasquez.

Only when he stood up straight on the mat in front of her did she realize that he was quite a bit taller than she first thought.

She moved forward quickly with an advance, but he blocked it. When he laughed at that, she got angry and surprised him with a high kick that hit him in the jaw and he stood back, hand on his face, stunned.

"Sarge, she's using fucking karate moves!" Hudson complained, holding his jaw.

"Consider this an exercise in defense then," said Apone, struggling to contain his amusement.

Hudson grumbled and some of the team began to laugh. He readied himself for Vasquez's next attack, but when she was just about to make a move, he moved quicker, grabbing the inside of her knee and pulling her legs out from under her in a successful takedown that would have earned him two points, had they been playing by the rules.

She fought back, slipping her leg from his grasp and when he clambered on top of her to try to pin her to the mat, she clamped her legs around his waist and propelled them into a roll until she was sitting on his stomach. He seemed surprised at the move, his blue eyes wide before he quickly bucked her off and they wrestled on the floor. He was a stronger opponent than she thought he'd be and if she wanted to win, she knew she would have to be strategic.

When Hudson's arm came towards her to press her shoulder to the floor, she deflected it, holding his arm across his own body and allowing her to get behind him and maneuver her other arm around his neck in a chokehold.

He coughed as her grasp restricted his airflow and she felt confident she could deprive him of enough oxygen for him to tap out. She was startled when he managed to move into an upright kneeling position with her hanging off his back. Then he grabbed her arm that was around his neck and swiftly tucked his head in towards the floor, thrusting her forward and flinging her over his shoulder so her back hit the mat with a loud thud, knocking some of the air from her lungs.

A couple quick cheers emanated from the group.

Vasquez gasped, trying to regain her breath as Hudson did the same. Then he was on top of her, his knee on her stomach, wrists at her neck in a cross-choke position and he flashed her an arrogant smile.

"That all you got?"

Vasquez felt an adrenaline rush, not wanting to lose. With her free arm, she thrust the heel of her hand into the side of his arm and he grunted, half of the cross-choke coming free, and he scrambled to try to keep her down as her head came up and she head-butted him hard in the face.

Immediately, his hands went to his face and she knew she had done some real damage. He winced, holding his nose, which had begun bleeding profusely.

His guard down, Vasquez easily grabbed ahold of his right arm and slipped her legs around his neck in a triangle choke, locking her legs together to cut off his air supply.

The others jeered as Hudson finally tapped the mat and Vasquez released her legs from Hudson's neck, her skin and clothes smeared with his blood. They both collapsed on the mat catching their breath.

"Okay, okay," said Apone. "That's enough showcasing for today. Hudson, get up."

Vasquez had already gotten to her feet and she went over to Hudson, who was on his knees, hunched over, holding his nose as blood dripped to the mat. She extended her hand out to him and he looked up and rolled his eyes at her. She knew she had bruised his ego and most likely broken his nose.

Begrudgingly, he reached out with a bloody hand and she took it and helped him to his feet, and he walked past her without another word.

"Lord, this looks like a crime scene," said Apone, looking at the mat. "But goddamn was that entertaining!"

"Think you're enjoying this a bit too much, Sarge," Hudson replied sourly, holding the front of his shirt up to his nose, the olive green fabric growing dark red.

Beside him, Vasquez wiped her hands on her own shirt, leaving behind gruesome looking handprints.

Apone looked somewhat disgusted. "Go clean yourselves up, both of you," he ordered. "And Husdson, find a mop while you're at it!"

.

After a full day of combat practice, Vasquez felt worn out as she sat next to Drake at dinner that evening. She wondered if Apone was always going to work them that hard or if he was just making a point of it for their first day.

Laughter suddenly began circulating around the table as Hudson appeared in the mess hall, dark bruises now visible under each eye, bunched up tissue sticking out of each nostril.

At the sound of the laughter and jeers, he looked comically deflated. "Aw, come on, guys," he said dejectedly and sulked over to the table looking hurt.

Across from her, Private Frost looked up, "I'll tell ya, Vasquez, I'm glad you didn't pick me today," he laughed, "You're one badass marine. You'll fit right in."

She smiled at Frost's words and he gave her a fist bump. But as she looked over at Hudson, his earlier bravado crushed and defeat visible on his face, a small part of her felt bad for him.

As crew members began getting up from the table, a spot next to Hudson opened up and she got up and walked around the table to where he sat.

"How's your nose?" she asked and he looked up at her, his appearance pitiful with the makings of two black eyes.

"You fight dirty," he said to her looking unimpressed.

"I know," she replied. "Can I sit?"

"Knock yourself out," he said indifferently, starting to get up.

"Just wait a second," said Vasquez, placing a hand on his tray to try to deter him from leaving. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to hit you that hard."

Reluctantly, he sat back down.

"You from the south?" she asked, sensing a bit of a southern accent from his words.

"Texas," he said and then he sighed and his expression softened a bit. "Fort Worth. You?"

"I lived in Louisiana for a while. New Orleans and Baton Rouge" she replied, not wanting to over-share. "You an Astros fan?"

He shook his head. "Rangers."

"Good answer," she replied.

Vasquez could just barely make out a subtle smile come to his face.

Not quite the cocky grin he wore before, but it was a start.

.

That evening, she checked her pockets and her locker for the folded paper note, fully expecting Drake to have returned it to her. After all, she had undoubtedly kicked ass that day, even if it had been that of a fellow teammate.

But the note never turned up and she couldn't help but feel a childish sense of disappointment.

In fact, she hadn't seen the note in weeks and she was certain the last place she had left it was on Drake's bedside table. She wondered if it had gotten lost or fallen into someone else's possession or if it was somewhere still aboard the Argo.

But then another thought came to mind: what if Drake was purposely not giving it back to her? He had seemed quiet at dinner, and if she thought about it, he had been pretty quiet since they had gotten there.

She watched him carefully the following day, and, sure enough, something seemed off. He was barely talking to her, barely looking her in the eye. So after combat practice, she pulled him aside in the locker room.

"Are you okay? Is something the matter?" she asked. When he was silent, she pressed him until he pulled her over to a spot away from the lockers where there was less chance for someone to overhear them. Finally he spoke.

"Things feel different here," he replied unhappily.

"Yeah, they do," she said carefully. "But we'll get used to it, just like we did on the Argo."

Drake shook his head. "No, I mean, different with us." He looked regretful. "This room situation here… we're never going to get a chance to be alone together… So what does that even make us?"

"Uh, it makes us _friends_, like we always were," she said, hearing her voice raise slightly in annoyance.

"You're more than happy to go back to being just friends?" he asked her incredulously.

"Yeah," she replied simply, "Would that be so bad? Just friendship, the way it used to be between us—simple and uncomplicated." To be honest, the thought sounded pretty good to her.

But Drake looked hurt. "Well it may be simple for you to go back to that, Vaz, but it's not so easy for me. I just… don't know if I can."

Vasquez stared at him in disbelief. "What the hell are you talking about?"

But he turned and began walking away.

"Drake!"

.

For some reason, she thought the experience of moving to a new team where they didn't know anyone would have strengthened her friendship with Drake. Now, the thought of losing his friendship altogether was throwing her into a tailspin. All because they could no longer sleep together.

But at the same time, she knew Drake well enough to understand why he was upset. For him, it was more than just sex—it was an emotional connection. Drake had feelings for her, she knew that. And while she had feelings for him too, those feelings were somehow different: she would have been fine with going back to being just friends with Drake. But to Drake, it was all or nothing.

For days, their new feud hung over her like a raincloud. She didn't know the answer, how to get him to see things the way she did.

Surprisingly, it was her roommate, Ferro, who offered an unexpected solution.

Ferro was like her in many ways. She wasn't overly sentimental and didn't take much bullshit from others. So after days of witnessing Vasquez come back to the room in a bad mood, Ferro finally cracked.

"You going to just pretend I'm stupid or what?" Ferro asked abruptly as Vasquez walked into their room one evening.

"What are you talking about?" she responded in confusion.

"That thing going on between you and Drake. I'm not blind, you know. I've got a good sense for these things."

"Yeah? What about it Ferro?"

"Well," said Ferro pointedly. "Just say I decided to go to the gym for a couple hours one night… I could let you know when I was going to be gone and for how long. You know, in case you guys wanted to…"

"I get it," said Vasquez. "What's in it for you?"

Ferro didn't even pretend to be offended by the question of her angle. "Reciprocation. You disappear when I score one of the new guys. I'd kill for some fresh meat."

"You're an animal," Vasquez said, smiling at her roommate. "Fine, it's a deal. As long as you know that if you say anything to anyone about this, I'll kill you in your sleep."

"Right back at you, roomie," said Ferro cheerfully.

.

It didn't take long to fall into a comfortable routine aboard the Sulaco. As their mission ramped up, Vasquez felt challenged and satisfied in her work. She was beginning to develop real friendships with her new crewmates, even Hudson, who inexplicably became one of the people she worked best with (although their dynamic off-duty was a different story).

Now that she and Drake were able to have some time alone together, Drake seemed content and their relationship fell into a new pattern of normalcy. And when the folded paper note showed up under her pillow one evening, she felt happy to have her friend back.

. . .

Vasquez sat in the dropship beside Hicks, who was now asleep. Bishop had landed the dropship on the roof of the atmospheric processing station and Ripley had left in search of Newt.

When they set down, Bishop had moved Hicks to one of the pull-down cots in the hull of the dropship and injected him with morphine. However, it seemed to work as a sedative and Hicks' uncovered eye instantly looked drowsy and his head dropped forward, dazed until he eventually fell asleep. For that reason, Vasquez refused the shot from Bishop and just stuck with the local pain blocker instead. She wanted to stay alert until they had made it out.

It felt awful not being able to help, knowing that Ripley was risking her life down in the alien nest. However, she knew if she had attempted to go in her condition, she would have been slow and a potential liability.

But of course, it was more than that. It was also the place where she had lost Drake.

The folded piece of paper that she had discovered during her escape still remained in her pant pocket. She had been holding onto it for a while now, working up the courage to pull it out and look at it.

She wondered at what point Drake could have slipped it in her pocket, and how it had taken her so long to notice it was there.

Finally, she took a deep breath and pulled out the note.

She hadn't seen it for the last couple years, just presuming it had been lost. But now here it was in her hand, just as she remembered it: crowded with familiar-looking writing and drawings overlapping each other in pen and pencil.

Vasquez unfolded it carefully and her eyes went to her drawing of him, the angel wings and halo now taking on a new, heartbreaking significance.

The paper had aged, soft and discoloured. The folds were now worn and delicate, a rip already beginning from the top along the vertical crease, threatening to divide the paper—and the faded drawing of her and Drake—in two.

The symbolism of it felt almost too much to handle.

A sudden flash of his acid-burned face came to her mind and she winced, trying to shake the image. It had happened so quickly, there had been such a scramble for survival afterward that she barely had time afterward to process his death.

But her mind was thinking of him now, whether she wanted it to or not. She recalled their history, their time together, the good and the bad. A lump formed in her throat, pressure behind her eyes, the weight of sadness so heavy that she wanted to yell because she couldn't cry.

She looked up at the ceiling of the hull in sorrow, when she had a sudden thought.

It had been so long since she had seen the paper note that she almost forgot it had been their ritual to add something new each time they passed it on.

Desperately, she scanned the note, looking for the message that Drake had left for her.

It was hard to distinguish what had been there for years from what might have been new. But finally, she noticed something written in the bottom right corner.

_'I've been thinking about everything we've been through, how far we've come and how lucky I am to have you in my life. Hope this new mission can be a fresh start.'_

She took in his handwriting, reading the message over and over again.

Throughout her past, a strange thing would happen everytime she experienced something traumatic. Whether it was her father or mother dying, the murder she committed, and now the loss of so many of her friends and teammates—it was as if her emotional hard drive would overload and she would go from feeling _everything _to almost nothing at all.

As she stared at Drake's words on the page, the guilt and sadness was so intense that she felt herself slipping into that same protection mode, her brain and heart acting like an electrical breaker in a power surge, snapping everything into darkness.

Vasquez folded the paper and placed it back in her pocket. She couldn't allow herself to think about the fact that everything they had shared together was now over, that their simple ritual—which had once brought her so much joy and comfort—definitively ended here on this rock, along with their friendship.

In her mind, she pretended that Drake had escaped with Hudson, Ferro and the others and was now waiting for her back on the Sulaco.

She told herself that when she got back, she would slip the note in his locker, her message telling him just how thankful she was to have had him in her life.

No, she would go to his room and tell him that _in person_.

Then, she would spend one final night with him.

She would say she was sorry.

And he would forgive her.

.


	7. Down and Out

Hudson shuffled along the metal grate gangway as quietly as he could manage. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him standing as he continued forward, his eyes scanning the inert faces of the cocooned in search of Newt.

He thought back to the beginning of the mission, not knowing whether it had been earlier that day or yesterday morning. Whenever it was, it now felt like weeks ago.

The day had started well.

He had been in high spirits. He remembered the excitement he felt walking into the locker room that morning, knowing that the mission was different—that in less than four short weeks, he would be _out_, his ten years of service finished. _His last mission._

That part had been correct, at least. The rest of what he had expected of the mission couldn't have been more different. He had anticipated a simple bug hunt, just a standard shoot-em-up operation that would have them back on the Sulaco in time for dinner.

Hudson could vividly recall his first time walking through this place and his shock at the lurid, frozen faces of the deceased, his courage waning, his previous swagger instantly falling by the wayside.

Moments later and they were outnumbered. They had no chance, being picked off one by one, like lambs to the slaughter, sounds of terror echoing around him as his crewmates' panicked voices buzzed over the comm system and into his headset.

Even now, he could recall what death sounded like, voices of his friends screaming through his mind to the point where it was deafening. He had never wanted to come back to this place.

Yet here he was, willingly searching this hellhole, completely alone as an emergency warning sounded, telling him he only had twelve minutes to evacuate and reach 'minimum safe distance.'

But just like everything about this mission, things were different now. He was not just looking out for himself or his teammates anymore, he was looking for Newt, an innocent kid, and she hadn't signed up for any of this.

He doubted he had any chance of getting her out and onto the dropship, but he needed to try. Even if it meant just being with her as they both met their end. She deserved that much.

. . .

He had been surprised at the sight of the girl. Malnourished and traumatized, almost catatonic until she began slowly opening up, providing quiet replies to Ripley's questions.

Hudson had just come back from setting up the sentry guns with Vasquez. Truthfully, he didn't believe the plan would work—they barely had enough ammunition for each gun to fire continuously for sixty seconds. While he kept that to himself, the thought made him feel nervous and irritable.

Adding to his misery was the fact that the painkiller Hicks had given him back in the APC was wearing off and his acid-burned arm was now on fire, heating up the rest of his body.

"Anyone got any water?" He asked loudly, aware of the agitation in his own voice.

No one responded, the others milling around the room, either distracted by other things or ignoring him on purpose. Hudson sat dejectedly down on a swivel chair, his elbow on the computer console in front of him, forehead in his hand. He closed his eyes and contemplated the likelihood that he would die only four weeks before he was set to be out of the Corps for life.

A sudden tap on his knee brought him from his thoughts and he opened his eyes to Newt holding up a large bottle of water with both hands.

Despite his obvious bad mood, she didn't seem afraid of him. She looked at him curiously as he got out of his slouch and peered down at her.

"Oh, thanks kid," he said to her, taking the bottle and drinking from it as she watched him with interest. "Newt, right?" he asked her and she nodded shyly.

As he looked into her innocent face, he felt his irritability begin to fade. He thought about all she had been through. A little girl that had just lost her entire family and was now amongst strangers that were no doubt different and intimidating.

He gave her a smile. "Hey, I got a joke, you wanna hear it?"

She nodded and leaned against the console, her gaze attentive.

By this time, Ripley had sat down across from them. Hudson could tell Ripley was anxious, her mind still working out their survival plans as she smoked her cigarette and watched over Newt protectively.

"Okay," said Hudson, pausing momentarily to think through the delivery of the joke. "A man walks into a bar holding his pet newt. He orders a drink and the bartender asks, "Can I get anything for your little lizard friend there?" And the man turns to him and says, "Who you callin' a little lizard? He's _my newt."_

He performed the last line with emphasis, highlighting the play on words, and the girl's face brightened into something resembling a smile.

Across from them, he saw the side of Ripley's mouth curl into a reluctant smile as well.

"You liked that, Ripley?" He asked her in amusement. "Jeez, things must be getting bad."

"I heard that one before," said Newt quietly, her face still looking brighter and she climbed onto the chair beside him cautiously.

"How could you have heard that one? I just made it up right now," he teased her and her smile grew a bit more.

"I heard one _like that _before," she corrected herself.

"Ah, one _like it. _Mine's funnier though, right?"

She breathed a little laugh and nodded.

Ripley chuckled quietly at their interaction and Hudson suspected it was a relief for her to see Newt smile.

Vasquez sat down now next to Ripley and Ripley raised her eyebrows and said, "Mr. comedian here."

"Oh _great,_" sighed Vasquez as she sat.

But Newt didn't seem to be aware of their sarcasm and she sat swivelling on the chair next to Hudson contentedly. His joke seemed to have gained him a fair bit of credibility with her because she instantly seemed more trusting, and she began asking him about his attire and his combat knife, and he began a lengthy show-and-tell of all the things he had in his pockets.

But after a while, she grew quiet, carefully pulling at the pieces of the tech kit he let her play with. He could tell that she, too, was feeling the stress of their situation.

"So what kind of a name is _Newt?_" He asked, an attempt to distract her from her worries.

"My dad started calling me that. He said I would climb the walls and hide in small spaces," she said in her small breathy voice. There was a sadness in her words that made Hudson regret asking the question.

He nodded in understanding. "Well you're pretty good at staying hidden, I'll give you that." He looked at Ripley and Vasquez. "She'd make a good scout, don't you guys think?"

Ripley nodded and smiled at Newt.

Hudson held out his fist, "go like this." And when Newt complied and held out her small closed hand towards him, Hudson gave her a fist bump.

"There, now you're an honorary member of the crew. Welcome to the team, Scout."

. . .

Hudson's shoulder lamp flickered, shone dimly and then ultimately went dead, leaving him on a barely-lit path, illuminated only by the faint emergency lighting.

"Of course," he breathed, his teeth grinding in stress.

He reached to his shoulder and tried to switch the light on and off, shook it with his hand, then hit it with the butt of his pulse rifle, at a loss as the lamp cracked off its base, flew backwards and clattered to the floor, tipping down the gangway.

Never would he have guessed such a thing would _bounce_, but it did, and he watched in disbelief as the lamp clanged over the side of the mezzanine, in freefall until he heard the sound of it clattering onto the metal floor below.

"Just. Fucking. _Of course._"

His eyes were strained, trying to see too far ahead of him, so he stopped moving and listened instead.

During the silences between the emergency alarm, he could hear movement. In fact, he could feel it. The sense that something was coming towards him.

He raised his pulse rifle and moved his back against a wall as several sleek black shadows stealthily crept near. There were at least three of them, elongated heads and barred white teeth coming into view.

He fired. Aliens screeched, ducking in and out of the shadows. He yelled back at them, his gunfire divided between targets. The situation felt so surreal that for a moment, he could have been convinced that he was immersed in a training simulation. But he had always been good at simulated target practice and he was in the zone now, adrenaline surging through his bloodstream, firing accurately, rapidly switching between approaching targets, acid flying, just far enough out of range.

With two down, he chased the third warrior with a barrage of gunfire. But his opponent was fast, darting across the floor and then up the wall and on to the ceiling above. Then the creature dropped from the ceiling and fell on him, pinning him to the ground.

When he wasn't immediately dead, he knew it was trying to pull him away again so his body could be a host. Once again, he was trapped.

As he wrestled with the beast, he heard the unmistakable sound of a pulse rifle firing nearby. His first thought was of Vasquez. Whoever it was, they must have come back in search of Newt.

The creature pinning him must have sensed a greater danger than he posed, because its elongated head turned in the direction of the gunfire. Hudson took the opportunity to give the bug a hard kick in the chest and it screeched and promptly scurried away towards the sound of the rifle.

As Hudson struggled to his feet, a great vibration rumbled through the complex and the sound of an explosion sounded nearby. An even larger explosion followed and he struggled to keep his balance as tremors shook the floor he stood on, the building becoming unstable as the atmospheric processor approached detonation.

Whoever had fired the pulse rifle had not yet been able to escape. Time was running out and he knew he needed to help.

Hudson moved quickly in the direction of where the alien had retreated. At least one of the others was still alive and that filled him with an out-of-place feeling of hope.

. . .

As they sat idly in the operations centre, Vasquez looked absent and exhausted and Hudson noticed that she had barely said anything since they had gotten back from setting up the sentry guns.

She was motionless, her muscular arm swung over the backrest of the task chair, feet up on the chair beside her, her jaw tense. She looked mostly at the floor, just her dark eyelashes visible. She was still for a long time, and for a moment he thought she had fallen asleep, until her eyelashes blinked and her gaze shifted.

As Hudson conversed casually with Newt, he watched Vasquez, wishing he could know what she was thinking about. He wondered if she was picturing Drake's final moments, beginning to feel his loss more deeply now that the earlier state of commotion was dissolving into downtime.

He stared back at Newt's curious face and he realized that the young girl had said something that he had missed.

"Sorry, kid?"

"_Lou-ise_," the girl repeated softly, her small finger slightly raised to point at his armour, sounding out the word that she was reading on his chest. "What does that mean?"

Hudson glanced down at the white writing and the love knot that decorated his armour. "Louise," he exhaled and Newt looked at him inquisitively, her innocent eyes waiting for him to tell her more. "Louise was my girlfriend," he continued. "Actually, we were supposed to get married, but we never got to."

"How come?"

"Things just... didn't work out that way," Hudson said slowly, carefully choosing his words to avoid upsetting her.

Newt gazed up at him in earnest. "Maybe you can talk to her," she said thoughtfully.

Hudson smiled at the girl and her curious, caring nature.

"Yeah. Maybe, Scout."

Ripley dropped the remainder of her cigarette into an empty mug and stood up, looking at Newt warmly. Her words were gentle, almost whispering, "How 'bout time for bed, huh? _New recruit?_"

Newt climbed off her chair obediently and went over to Ripley, who led her away to get some sleep in the medical lab, where there was a bed.

Hudson's eyes went back to Vasquez, and she had barely moved since he had last looked over at her.

Of course he knew she was thinking about Drake. He knew from the look on her face—the way it reminded him of the numb feeling of disbelief he experienced when he first lost Louise. He wondered how much of that Vasquez was feeling now.

When she suddenly looked up and their eyes met, he felt his face flush a bit and he said awkwardly, "You look tired."

But she said nothing and just seemed to stare through him, expressionless.

A sudden, loud noise came from behind Hudson, and he jumped to his feet in surprise, spinning around fearfully. But it was just Hicks dropping a gun case onto the table.

"Fucking hell!" Hudson hollered. He felt like he had finally just calmed down and now his blood pressure was once again through the roof. "Jesus man, my heart," he complained, holding his chest.

"Sorry," said Hicks absently, running another inventory of their ammunition. He didn't even look up.

Hudson turned back to Vasquez to see her reaction, but she had stood up and was already walking in the direction of the adjoining room, moving without any particular purpose.

"Fuckin' scared the shit outta me," Hudson grumbled again to Hicks.

"You should use this time to try to sleep," Hicks said to him, his eyes still on the pulse rifle, which he promptly began to take apart to clean.

Hudson's gaze followed Vasquez into the other room as she moved to an open space on the floor, dropped down and began doing push-ups.

_"Right. _Like I'd be able to sleep at a time like this," he said to Hicks bitterly. He felt on edge again, reminded of their situation.

"You'll regret not taking the chance when those sentries start going off…" Hicks glanced over at him, his voice growing less placid. "I need you to stay sharp. Go. And tell Vasquez to do the same."

Hudson exhaled, accepting the words as an order and he stalked into the adjoining room to where Vasquez had moved on from pushups to crunches.

He stopped in front of where her feet were, looking down at her. "Hicks wants us to sleep."

"Fuck that," she said stubbornly.

"Hey, tell that to Hicks, I'm just the messenger. Don't know how he thinks anyone could just take a nap right now."

From the other room, another loud noise sounded as Hicks shuffled around the gun cases loudly and Hudson jumped, head snapping back to the sound of the noise, unable to prevent his fear response from getting the better of him again.

"Fuck!" He yelled at the ceiling. In Hicks' direction he said loudly, "I swear to God, man. Can you, like, _not do that_ or something? Jesus!"

"Calm down, you idiot," said Vasquez, abandoning the exercise and getting to her feet, an annoyed look on her face. "What the hell is wrong with you? You're actually losing it."

"What's wrong with _me?_ What's wrong with everyone else?!" Hudson snapped back at her, slightly hysterical. "The rest of our team is fucking dead! How are you guys staying so goddamn cool through all of this?!"

"Freaking out doesn't solve anything—it just puts people on edge and irritates the shit out of everyone else, so just get a grip."

Hudson was silent. He knew she was right.

He suddenly felt overwhelmed and exhausted, so he sat down on the floor, his back against the cold concrete wall.

The burn on his arm now throbbed relentlessly and the biting pain of scorched nerve endings was jarring. He held his arm and grit his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead.

Vasquez looked down at him sitting on the floor miserably and he thought she was going to tell him to get up and stop sulking. Instead, a streak of sympathy crossed her face.

"Keep it elevated, it'll hurt less," she said.

"Really?" he asked with skepticism and she shrugged. He tried it, gingerly raising his arm so that it was higher than his heart. It hurt to use his arm muscles, so he held the arm up with his right hand. But it was awkward and he couldn't sustain it, so he let his arm fall back to his side.

Vasquez stared at him for a moment before giving a sigh of resignation and then sat down on the floor beside him.

"Here," she said as she carefully took his bandaged arm in her hands and slowly raised it, gently positioning his elbow to rest on her shoulder as a way to keep it elevated.

Every so often, Vasquez could surprise him by how sweet and compassionate she could be. He watched her, temporarily at a loss for words as she leaned back against the wall, staring forward, his arm on her shoulder.

He relaxed the muscles in his arm, letting his hand hang heavily between them. Already, he could feel the throbbing sensation begin to fade.

"Thanks," he said quietly, but Vasquez didn't respond and they just sat for a while without talking.

"Jesus, you stink," she said after a moment, breaking the silence.

Hudson gave a laugh. He was aware that he smelled like sweat, and it didn't help that his arm was now raised.

"Yeah, well, hate to break it to ya, but you don't exactly smell like a bouquet of roses either.''

"Fuck you," she laughed.

"Fuck _you,_" Hudson retorted and he realized it was probably the first time he had seen her actually smile in hours. For a minute, he had even forgotten about their situation and it occurred to him that his level of anxiety had dropped the moment Vasquez sat down beside him.

"How are you _actually _holding up?" he asked her, hoping she would tell him the truth.

Vasquez paused. "I'm not," she replied. "This is bullshit…_ Drake, _man. I just can't believe…" She trailed off, resting her head back against the wall.

Hudson nodded, his jaw clenched. "Yeah."

He wanted to say something meaningful—tell her that he knew how hard losing Drake must be for her, that he understood what it meant to lose someone close, and whenever she needed to, she could talk to him about it.

But after some thought, he settled on the words he knew she would find the most immediate comfort in. "It fucking sucks," he said to her.

Vasquez nodded her head against the wall in agreement and closed her eyes. Her eyebrows knitted together slightly and he could read the anger and sadness on her face, the pain in the expression.

After a while, she crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly away from him, and Hudson knew she was making an attempt at sleep so she wouldn't have to continue talking or thinking about the things that were plaguing her.

But she was clearly also exhausted because moments later, her head dropped down abruptly and he knew she had momentarily fallen asleep. She gave a quiet grunt as she drowsily lifted her head back up against the wall, her eyes still closed.

When her head drooped forward again, Hudson took his arm off of her and gently held her forehead, guiding it towards him so she could lean her head against his shoulder.

It was nothing more than returning the gesture she provided to him a moment ago—lending a shoulder to a friend—yet something felt so comforting about having her rest against him, feeling her shallow breaths through the fabric of his shirt.

Hudson eased back against the concrete. He didn't think he would be able to sleep, but then he shut his eyes.

. . .

The sound of the pulse rifle had stopped and Hudson stood still, listening for a sign to tell him which way to go.

Ahead of him, the metal gangway split into two directions. The first path led back to the main mezzanine where he could see an emergency exit sign and the structure of the freight elevator. The second, into a tunnel-like expanse, where layers of sinuous material darkened the space, draped over the station's mechanics like rotting flesh hanging off an animal carcass.

As much as everything in his conscience told him to go in the direction of safety, his decision felt clear and he stepped forward into the darkness.

He moved through the ominous environment, carefully planting his feet amongst the dark alien matter that lined the floor like a tangle of tree roots. He gingerly placed one foot in front of the other, hearing nothing but the emergency alarm and his own breathing.

Something glowed on the floor in front of him, and as he approached, he saw that it was a flare that someone had lit to mark their path and he knew he was heading in the right direction. Then came the low whooshing sound of a flamethrower, accompanied by alien screeches.

He began moving faster, stumbling ahead towards the sound. In the distance, a level down, he could see the faint orange light from the flames. Even when the sound stopped and the light from the flame was no longer visible, he hopped down a flight of stairs and continued onward in the direction it had come from.

Another flare glowed on the floor, indicating that he was getting closer. Then he walked into a clearing and couldn't believe what he saw in front of him.

On the floor was a minefield of hundreds of alien eggs, grotesquely connected with an intricate network of dark tubes, like leathery veins. Amongst them were the forms of Ripley and Newt.

Their backs were to him, both standing and staring ahead and he felt a surge of relief that Newt was alright. But, they were on their own, no sign of Hicks, Vasquez, Gorman, and the distressing thought that the others hadn't made it entered his mind.

Ripley was impressively armed—a pulse rifle and a flamethrower at the ready. He wanted to get her attention, run to them and usher them back towards the freight elevators, but something told him to be still, not to make a sound.

Ripley and Newt were almost motionless, as if trying to go unnoticed. They were both looking up at something.

Hudson's gaze travelled upward and a slow movement caught his eye. There, a dark, sinister form towered from above.

The sight was unbelievable. A massive insect-like creature, black as night, fifteen feet tall, with bony appendages splaying out from its thorax like skeletal ribs, affixing the creature to its environment. A viscid abdomen was unsettlingly translucent, silhouetted eggs visible inside. The enormous, elongated head looked like a crested shield, massive and threatening.

The queen.

He stared, frozen in place as his jaw dropped and a shiver of terror crept up his spine, but he remained still.

In front of him, Ripley was now slowly inching backward, lightly pushing Newt to do the same. Around the perimeter of the room, Hudson could see shadowy forms lurking, poised to strike, but they didn't. They seemed to be waiting for something—an implicit truce of nonviolence until one side made the first move. With luck, they might be able to get away without facing resistance.

But the subsequent opening of an egg in front of Ripley indicated that the colony did not intend to let them go quietly and Ripley swiftly pulled the trigger on the incinerator unit, releasing a napalm fireball, torching the egg and others around it.

The enormous queen screeched and flailed angrily as Ripley continued on the offensive, a steady stream of fire erupting from the flamethrower.

As the warriors around them began closing in, Ripley fired her rifle, the noise deafening between gunfire, and alien screeches. But behind her and Newt, Hudson could see an alien creeping up, ready to attack.

Hudson acted quickly, moving in towards them and drawing the VP70 pistol that had belonged to Dietrich, hoping the handgun would be a safer choice for the close range. Newt turned and saw him just as he held the trigger of the semi-automatic, firing at the assailant. He grinded his teeth as the handgun kicked back against his broken wrist, turning away and shielding Newt from the spray of acid.

He could feel small droplets burn his outstretched arm, the side of his neck, eating through his armour, but it was minor and he considered himself lucky and Newt gazed up at him in surprise and the alien fell to the ground, dead. Ripley had spun around to face him now too, looking him over, an expression of complete shock on her face.

Hudson tucked the pistol back into his pants. "Fancy seeing you here," he said dryly, switching back to his pulse rifle.

Ripley shook her head in disbelief, but her face brightened at the sight of him, a subtle look of gratitude expressing what she didn't have the time to voice. Then they both turned their attention back to their surroundings and continued firing.

A pump of the grenade launcher and Ripley shot a grenade at the alien queen, followed by several more, as the hisses and screeches emanated from the immobile giant. Hudson followed suit, emptying the grenades from his pulse rifle, explosions quaking through the space.

"Now let's get the fuck outta here!" he yelled, grabbing Ripley's arm to get her attention amongst the deafening noise. She nodded as she pulled off a belt of grenades and tossed it into the flames.

Hudson slung his pulse rifle on his back, swiftly picked up Newt, and he and Ripley broke into a run as explosions erupted behind them.

As they moved towards the freight elevators, the automated warning became more audible, _'Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have four minutes to reach minimum safe distance.' _

Despite his hobbled limp and the extra weight of carrying Newt, Hudson managed to keep up a quick pace, Ripley only slightly ahead, reaching the elevators and pressing the button to go up. He could see the elevator coming down from the top of the shaft, flames from upper floors now visible, threatening collapse or mechanical failure of their only lifeline.

"Jesus, this place is coming apart! Did you hear that, Ripley? Four minutes!" He set Newt down, taking her hand and guiding her behind him and Ripley. He took hold of his pulse rifle again and aimed it down the corridor in the direction in which they had come.

"I heard," said Ripley. She hit the button to the elevator impatiently, "Come on!"

"Four minutes," Hudson repeated, his anxiety mounting.

"We're going to make it," Ripley said reproachfully, a warning glance telling him to hold it together, not to scare Newt.

But as Hudson stayed silent, eyes wide and pulse rifle pointed, it was Ripley's composure that faltered and she pounded on the elevator button in frustration, "Come on goddammit!"

Next to them, a ladder led to the mezzanine above where there was another set of elevator buttons. Ripley eyed it and picked up Newt, about to climb the ladder, when Hudson heard a noise and he put his hand on Ripley's shoulder, telling her to wait.

They stared down the hall, hearing movement drawing nearer. A dark figure emerged from the shadows and the enormous crested head came into view.

"Oh shit," Hudson responded automatically. He ushered Ripley back toward the elevator. She was still holding Newt, hugging her tightly, and Hudson stood in front of them protectively and fired as the alien queen stomped forward.

Behind them, he could hear sounds of the elevator, but he continued to fire, trying to keep the creature from moving any closer.

Then Ripley was grabbing the back of his armour, pulling him backward into the freight elevator. The gate came down and when the beast threw itself against the mesh, Ripley used the flamethrower and Hudson shielded Newt.

The flame dwindled from an emptying fuel canister, but the elevator car was thankfully in motion, moving upward, separating them from the looming creature.

One floor up and they felt incrementally safer, but still, the three of them crouched together in one corner of the elevator.

"You okay?" Ripley asked Newt softly, and the girl nodded. Ripley glanced down at the pulse rifle and flamethrower combo that she still held. Hudson could see that the counter on her pulse rifle read zero. "Got a spare mag?" she asked him.

Hudson shook his head, "I was going to ask you the same thing." He wasn't far behind her, his counter down to ten.

Ripley tossed down her two now useless weapons, and instead held Newt closer and the girl hugged her back. It struck him how genuine the gesture was, how easily the two could have passed for mother and daughter.

Hudson pulled out Dietrich's VP70 and extracted the magazine, counted twelve rounds including the one in the chamber. He quickly slid the mag back in and handed it to Ripley.

She took it from him with a nod of thanks. "You know, I didn't think we'd ever see you again."

"Sorry to disappoint," he replied and a slight smile mingled with the stress on her face. The question weighed on his mind and he was afraid for the answer, but he asked nonetheless: "Ripley. Is Vasquez...?"

"She's alive," Ripley confirmed and he exhaled the tension he had been holding in. "She's on the dropship with Hicks."

He stared at the ceiling of the freight elevator, relief washing over him. But the sheer fact that she wasn't here right now meant that she had likely gotten hurt. But Ripley had said she was alive, and for that he was thankful.

The elevator ascended eighteen stories to the roof, and when they arrived on the rooftop, they exited, expecting to see the dropship.

But the roof was empty, no dropship in sight, just debris falling from above as the surrounding structures burned. Everything was engulfed in flames now, rumbling and collapsing around them.

"No," said Ripley. "No! It was supposed to be here!" From below them came a massive explosion and the building shook. "Bishop, Goddamn you!"

Movement caused them to look back at the freight elevators and they could see that the second car was moving upward.

The three of them watched as it rose ominously towards the roof. "Get back!" yelled Hudson to Ripley over the sound of the collapsing structure. He stepped ahead of Ripley and Newt and aimed his pulse rifle as the elevator doors opened.

The image was surreal. Almost inconceivably, the alien queen appeared and slowly stalked out. Hudson swallowed hard but stood his ground.

Suddenly, the Cheyenne rose from the smoke below. As Bishop moved the dropship in place and lowered the stair to the undercarriage hatch, it suddenly occurred to him that they had a chance— Ripley and Newt. If he could keep it away from them for long enough, they both just might make it onto the ship.

In the light of the burning structures around them, he could now see the shape of the enormous crowned skull, translucent teeth, as long and sharp as daggers, its body shiny and greasy black. The image triggering all his basic instincts, every impulse telling him to run, yet he moved closer.

As the alien screeched, Hudson growled back wildly and moved forward. He didn't hold his finger on the trigger, trying to make the remaining rounds last, only releasing short bursts of gunfire at the creature. He hollered non-descript insults, barely able to hear the sound of his own voice. Either way, he had captured its attention.

The alien queen glided forward with impressive speed and he moved to the side, leading it away from Ripley and Newt. He fired again, hitting his target, only temporarily deterring it before it began moving towards him again and he emptied his gun. Through the crashing sounds around them, he heard Ripley's voice, "Hudson!"

He jumped backwards, narrowly avoiding a massive spiked tail that came down hard, stabbing the concrete in front of him.

Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Ripley lifting Newt onto the stair ladder up to the dropship, a flash of black leather fingerless gloves as the hand of someone on board helped pull Newt up into the ship. Hudson couldn't help but look over as Vasquez moved into view, perched on the steps now, the legs of her pants shredded and bloody. In one hand she held a pulse rifle, the other hand reached for Ripley, helping her up the stairs. As she did, her dark eyes looked up and she saw him, a look of sheer surprise on her face.

For a split second, time stood still. As he looked back at Vasquez, random memories flooded his mind: grappling on the floor with her when they first met; getting drunk with her on Gliese and the sight of her laughter; their sleeping bags inching closer together on the cold nights in the Darkside; and today, the feeling of her forehead resting against his shoulder.

In his tired brain, there was sudden clarity as he acknowledged that he wished he could have kissed her; wished he could have said goodbye.

But the entire moment only existed between blinks, and he reluctantly turned back to his adversary to accept his fate as the spiked tail whipped towards him, unavoidable as it swept forward horizontally and it hit him with force across the stomach.

He was knocked off his feet so hard that it was his upper back that hit the concrete first, his legs coming up over his head as he toppled backwards, his body skidding along the ground before coming to a halt.

Dazed, face down and unable to breathe, he shut his eyes in agony. It took him a moment to realize that the strange gasping noise he was hearing was coming from him.

But then there was the sound of a pulse rifle and a handgun firing and the dropship engine drawing nearer. Seconds later, a couple sets of hands on his shoulders dragged him backwards forcefully. Hudson heard his own name, a voice ordering him to move. He groaned as his feet touched the ground and he managed to support his own weight, staggering with help until he was on his hands and knees on the dropship stair.

They must have pulled him the rest of the way, because the next thing he knew, he was on his back, dizzy, staring up at the ceiling inside the dropship.

He wheezed, trying to move air into his lungs. The room spun and it hurt to breathe, but he also felt strangely calm.

There was a hand holding his, squeezing it tightly. Dark eyes were looking down at him. She was talking to him, but he couldn't make sense of what she was saying. He just blinked, looking up at her face until everything faded into oblivion.

. . .

The day had started well.

As they stood at their lockers and dressed in their combat gear, Hudson felt energized, glad to be back in the swing of things for one final mission. Most of all, he was happy to see everyone.

The locker room was a lively buzz of activity, everyone feeling the rush of adrenaline and nerves that came before every mission.

"Hope everyone ate their extra cornbread this morning," stated Frost as he walked across the room with his shirt off. "Company folks say we're in for a fight."

There were a few laughs amongst the crew, scoffing at how the little the Company reps knew.

Ferro gave a loud cat call in Frost's direction. "Put something on, you're killing me Ricco," she jeered.

"Yeah, come on Frost, you're making some of us look bad," joked Wiersbowski. "Anyone want to trade lockers so I don't have to stand next to this guy's abs?"

"You wouldn't have to ask me twice," replied Ferro.

Spunkmeyer shut his locker with a loud bang and beside him, Hicks attempted to light a cigarette, the sudden motion extinguishing the flame. Hicks flicked open the lighter again and exhaled smoke.

Vasquez waved her hand to clear the air in her vicinity. "You mind, hombre? Some of us are tryna quit."

"Why'd you even bother working out if you're just gonna do that to your lungs, man?" Drake asked Hicks.

"Same reason you wear a bunch of dead things around your neck, Drake," said Hicks without missing a beat. "It's just a habit."

"Fuck you, this is Navajo," Drake said indignantly, shaking the bone necklace around his neck.

"You said you got that in Reno," said Dietrich, shaking her head.

"Yeah, from a Native American elder."

"Was it the leftovers from his dinner? It's clearly just chicken bones, man," Hudson chimed in.

Drake grumbled under this breath about lack of respect and turned to Vasquez who was echoing the laughter of the others.

As banter continued to fly across the room, Hudson stood at his locker and took it all in, knowing that with his impending release from the Corps, he wouldn't get to experience too many more moments like this.

Beside him, Dietrich was wrapping her bad wrist in preparation for combat. Since getting back from a two month break, he and Dietrich had only had a brief moment to sit alone together and catch up. They had spent the two months without seeing one another, and while it was nice to see her now and catch up, he knew it would be better for them both if they stopped sleeping together, and he decided that he would talk to her about it later that night when they got back.

After watching Dietrich fumble momentarily with the wrap, he took over, redoing part of what she had attempted, wrapping the wrist securely. She smiled up at him, but there was a hint of sadness in her expression and he suspected she knew that what they had was coming to an end. Neither of them said much as he wrapped the support bandage around her wrist and hand, Kanji symbols and red sun facing forward.

A couple lockers down from him, Vasquez and Drake were now conversing quietly with one another, Drake's hands on her shoulders, sharing words of encouragement. When Vasquez nodded and eventually turned away, he watched as Drake took a folded piece of paper from his locker and slipped it into her vest pocket without her noticing.

He suspected Drake was trying to get back onto better terms with Vasquez. He knew they had also spent the two month break apart from one another, but other than that, he was unaware of their current relationship status. Not that it was any concern of his.

Apone's voice began warning them to quicken their pace and start moving out. "Alright, people! On the ready line!"

They followed Apone's directive, shutting lockers and sliding on last bits of gear. It didn't take them long to fall into formation, grabbing their weapons and filing into a line as the Sergeant's chant ushered them forward. "Get hot! One, two, three! Get out, get out, get out! Move it out, move it out, move it out!"

The crew stood in line against the wall of the hangar, outside of the armoured personnel carrier.

"Absolutely badasses!" growled Appone emphatically. "Let's pack 'em in! Get in there!"

Apone slid open the heavy door to the APC and they followed him in, taking their seats.

Company consultants Burke and Ripley were already seated toward the middle of the APC, looking around somewhat tentatively. Ripley seemed nervous and Hudson made a mental note to joke around with her later, inject some of his trademark humour into the conversation to get her to lighten up a bit.

"Lock 'em in Hudson!"

As his crewmates settled into their seats and pulled down the steel restraint bars, Hudson began systematically checking the restraints, part safety officer, part hype-man as he riled up the crew with colourful, high-energy words of motivation. He liked this part of his role, enjoyed the camaraderie and responsiveness as he playfully goaded each of his teammates, doling out high-fives and knuckle pounds, spouting cocky one-liners about their epic badassery.

He and Frost exchanged a ritualized handshake, which had become their common greeting. Dietrich raised her wrapped hand in a fist and he returned her fist bump. Then he leaned in, checking her restraint, giving her a secret wink.

He smacked Crowe's chest armour and gave Hicks a spirited punch in the arm. Vasquez held out her gloved hand and he slapped it hard for luck.

Hudson took his seat beside Hicks, feeling the vehicle tilt on an incline as Bishop drove the APC up the ramp and into the hull of the dropship. The voices of Ferro and Spunkmeyer could be heard over the radio starting up the Cheyenne, bringing the systems of the dropship to life.

Across from him, Vasquez's jaw was clenched and he knew she was mentally preparing herself for the mission. As smartgun operators, she and Drake wore more equipment than everyone else, including harnesses with Kevlar breastplates, on which Vasquez has scrawled the words, _El Riesgo Siempre Vive_. Even with her smaller stature, Vasquez carried the gear with the same ease that Drake did, wielding the smartgun with accuracy, unburdened by the obtrusive combat harness. Viewfinders meant that they didn't wear helmets, and today she had chosen to wear a red bandana around her forehead. Hudson wondered if she had selected the bandana in part to make a statement—that she was not concerned about being a target. That she had no fear.

As his other half in the field, Vasquez was the one to take point, always positioned as the first one in. And although she did not seem concerned for herself, he would be lying if he said he didn't worry about her, being the first visible target in every dangerous situation they went into.

It made him extra vigilant, knowing that he had a responsibility to cover her, that they had to act as a team, anticipate each other's movements; trust one another implicitly.

But with Hudson's upcoming departure from the Corps, Vasquez would soon be paired with a new gunteam partner and Hudson couldn't help but keep thinking about that. He knew Vasquez was tough and could take care of herself, but truthfully, the only one he trusted to hold that position next to her was himself.

In a matter of weeks, he would be out—finally free to truly begin his life, do exactly what he wanted and not have to be accountable to anyone but himself. And while that idea had always sounded appealing when he was stressed and overworked, he worried about how he would adjust to that type of life. How much would he miss the people here and the feeling of family? Would he lie in bed back in Texas, thinking about the others, wondering if they were alright?

Ferro's voice came over the comm system, "Stand by to initiate release sequencer… on my mark."

For now, all he needed to focus on was doing his job for one final mission. They would celebrate afterward. Everything would be fine.

"Five, four, three, two..."

The day had started well.


	8. Fight or Flight

After all of her experiences with death, it was only in retrospect that Vasquez ever fully realized the impact those events had on her life.

When her father died, all that she knew at the time was that she had lost a parent. It was only later that she realized her father's death had also meant losing her home, her way of life—and after she escaped foster care and went back to Ciudad Juárez—losing what remained of her childhood.

When she shot Martina Diaz, it hadn't occurred to her that in that split-second decision, it wasn't just a life she had sacrificed, but also her innocence and freedom, her relationship with her mother and Carmen—all within the time it took to pull the trigger.

She felt that way now, like she had only scratched the surface of the after effects of these losses, the true pain still yet to come and compound with time.

Now, as Vasquez laid on one of the pull-down cots in the hull of the dropship, she could already feel the loneliness begin to creep over her, unlike anything she had felt since her first day in juvenile detention.

She remembered back to those days—the tall boy with the light blond hair and the deep voice. _"Stick with me, kid."_ He had helped her through the crushing shame and emptiness she felt during her incarceration. For a while, he had been the only good thing in her life.

But now poor Drake, her best friend, was gone.

If it hurt this much now, how would it feel when enough time went by for her to really begin feeling his absence? How would she be able to live with herself when it truly set in that she was the reason he was gone?

Or that Gorman had traded his life for hers and she allowed him to do it?

How would she cope when it finally hit her that she would never get to party with Ferro again or get chewed out by Apone, shoot pool with Frost or fight with Dietrich?

How would she manage without Hudson, her squad partner? When would she realize she would never again see that grin, hear one of those bad jokes, or feel the warmth of his personality?

At what point would each loss feel most devastating?

As she laid still, her body numbed by painkillers, she thought of them. It was clear that it was not yet possible to grasp the magnitude of these losses. All she knew was that nothing would ever be the same.

Across from her, Hicks shifted on the ship's other cot, but he remained asleep, heavily sedated. Part of Vasquez knew Bishop had purposefully knocked him out, just in case they did need to leave without Ripley and Newt. Bishop had an obligation to make the most informed decision to save as many lives as possible.

She could hear the alarms sounding from the building now. The ship rumbled and Vasquez braced her arms against the mattress and she knew the reactor was becoming dangerously volatile. With much of the complex now up in flames, it was seeming less and less likely that anyone would even be able to make it out of the building.

"The roof is getting too unstable," Bishop called to her from the cockpit, "We can't stay here!"

"We can't go! Ripley and Newt are still in there!" She yelled up to him. The feeling of loss gripped her again as her mind considered the possibility that Ripley and Newt would also be added to the list of those they lost on this rock. "How much time we got?"

"We need to leave in four minutes in order to get out of range!" he yelled back to her.

Vasquez pushed herself up from her cot and onto her injured legs, grunting as she did. She limped to the weapons rack and grabbed a pulse rifle and ammo, loading it swiftly.

Bishop looked back at her apprehensively. "What are you doing?"

"I've had it with doing nothing, I'm going in there!"

. . .

"I didn't know you smoked."

Vasquez looked up from her cigarette to see Hudson striding over to the edge of the hangar, where she sat alone on a row of metal equipment crates.

She had been dreaming about a cigarette all day as they worked doing surveillance on Gliese 667 Cc. The day seemed extra long because of it, and finally when they returned to the Sulaco, she stayed back in the hangar for a smoke as the others headed to the locker room. It seemed to be the only thing to help with her stress these days.

"You gonna judge me?" She asked him.

"Think I came over to give you a guilt trip? I'm here to bum a smoke."

Vasquez held the pack out to him.

Hudson raised his eyebrows, "Do you always hide from Drake when you smoke?"

He was just reaching for the pack when she pulled it back and gave him a look. "I'm not hiding from Drake."

"Okay," Hudson conceded easily, and she offered it to him again and he pulled out a cigarette and sat down beside her, leaning in as she lit it for him.

Vasquez stared forward. "Sometimes I just get tired of feeling like a screw up, you know?"

Hudson scoffed. "You're not. What makes you say that?" he prompted, his blue eyes looking at her quizzically. When she didn't reply, he shook his head. "Well if you're a screw up, don't know what that makes me."

It was true that Hudson had been a bit of a mess lately. Since getting back from the two and a half month break, his mood had been all over the place, either silent and indifferent or argumentative, even downright disrespectful.

While she knew he was depressed after his breakup with his girlfriend Louise, part of her just wanted him to get over it and get back to his usual self.

"Don't usually see you smoke either," she observed. "Is that the kind of summer it was? We both take up smoking?"

"No," he replied thoughtfully, "I was actually in a really good place this summer… Sunshine, exercise, good company. It all fell apart as soon as I got here, though, that's for sure…" he trailed off a bit, seeming lost in thought until he mumbled, "Fucking shitshow."

There was a look of sadness on his face and it was the type of expression she wouldn't have often seen him wear prior to this mission. But it was now becoming commonplace. She recalled being in the locker room on one of their first days back, the comments she made to him about his ex girlfriend, remembering the look of hurt that he tried his best to hide. It was something she regretted, but she also got the feeling that she was missing part of the story.

When she didn't respond, Hudson gave a bit of an embarrassed smile and looked up at her. "So what happened over your summer?"

She shook her head, "Nothing."

"C'mon, Vaz. What's eatin' ya?"

"Nada."

"Right."

Hudson seemed to wait for her to say more but she didn't and he probably assumed he was just bothering her because he took a long drag from the cigarette and stubbed out the remainder on the metal crate.

"Well, good talk," he said, standing up. "Thanks for the dart." And he walked away.

In truth, there was a lot that was bothering her.

Things between her and Drake hadn't been good lately. As usual, because of their criminal convictions, they weren't allotted the same freedoms as the rest of the crew members. For their time off, the two were usually assigned community service work, sometimes alongside others in the who were also a part of the Service or Jail program. This time, they had been working as part of a community housing project in Houston, helping to build affordable housing and community gardens.

It was engaging, rewarding work, and Vasquez quickly found herself becoming immersed in the role, developing friendly working relationships with fellow workers and community members alike, enjoying the feeling of making a difference. She managed construction schedules with ease and worked everyday until her hands were raw. She even began organizing teams of volunteer youth on her days off to work on the houses, helping the kids to complete court-ordered community service work, while also—to the delight of project supervisors—advancing several project timelines.

And at the end of the project, when she began to see everything come together and she could picture the all-too-often ignored families and underserved community members actually benefiting from the things she had helped to create, her only regret was that she couldn't stay longer.

Drake, on the other hand, wasn't interested in the project. He did his work without objection, but in the evenings when they would go back to their small, shared accommodations, he would complain to her about the people and the tight timelines and it didn't take long before his attitude grated on her nerves. It had led to several unresolved fights and an almost perpetual tension between them while they were in Houston.

However, now that they were back to their routine on the Sulaco, Drake seemed to be more content, happy to pretend that nothing had gone wrong between them during their two and a half months away. His overcompensating, cheery facade actually bothered Vasquez as much as his bad attitude and she had begun to lose patience with that too. But it was hard to get mad at Drake for being pleasant and agreeable, and frustratingly, it seemed to rob her of legitimate grounds to be angry, so most of the time she was around him, she just ended up in a bad mood, feeling like a jerk.

Then, there was the even bigger thing that loomed over her. In just over seven months, when they returned to Gateway Station, she would be eligible for her first chance at a parole hearing. Being granted parole would mean that she would be released from such tight restrictions. She would no longer be required to serve in the USCM, but if she chose to, would be offered the same compensation as her fellow crew members. Between deployments, she would be free to work or travel or live where she wanted. It meant she could get started on a path to financial freedom and _actual_ freedom.

But the requirements to just apply for parole were daunting, particularly the fact that it asked her to select three people to include as a reference that parole officers could call on and interview, essentially grilling them about her behaviour and character.

The whole thing made her feel uncomfortable.

That night, as she reviewed the application again, staring at the three lines on which she was meant to record contact information for her references. She was aware that most people had no problem filling in that section, after all there was no rule to say family could not be listed. But family was a luxury that Vasquez no longer had, and because of Drake's criminal charge, she wasn't even allowed to list him. So far, she had one name: _Sergeant Al Apone_, and her mind cycled through her remaining crew mates, wondering what they would say about her given the chance.

Finally, she typed in a second name, which felt like a pretty safe bet, but it had been a long while since she had spoken to him, so she looked up his contact information and decided to send him a voice transmission.

"Hi Sergeant Costa. It's Private Jenette Vasquez," she began the voice recording. "I have, uh, something coming up and I—I was wondering if I might be able to list you as a reference. Uh, I hope all is still going well aboard the Argo. Thank you, Sir."

She sent the transmission before she could chicken out and tentatively typed _'Sergeant Matteo Costa'_ on the second line.

On the third line, she typed _Collette Ferro _and then deleted it. At the best of times, Ferro lacked an adequate filter on the things she said. She would put Ferro in the 'maybe pile' for now.

Vasquez proceeded to type in _Hudson, Hicks, Frost, Dietrich, _but even the thought of asking them caused an uncomfortable tightness in her chest, so she began deleting the names one by one, until the only name that remained on the line was _Hudson. _She paused in consideration.

Suddenly, she received a notification of a voice transmission that she had received back. It was from Costa.

Without hesitation, she opened it, surprised that he had heard her message and responded so quickly.

"Vasquez! So great to hear from you! I'm guessing this is in regards to a parole hearing?" came his clear, enthusiastic voice. "Well no sweat! I'd be happy to give you a shining reference! Actually, I've been meaning to contact you. I heard through the grapevine that you rocked the Houston housing project. There's an opening for an employment opportunity with the USCM At-Risk Youth Outreach Program and I wanted to see if you would be interested because I think you'd be perfect for it! I'll send you all the details. Think about it!"

Vasquez listened to the message again, and then just replayed the second half of the message: "There's an opening for an employment opportunity with the USCM At-Risk Youth Outreach Program…"

She felt a small jolt of pride and excitement. She was aware of the USCM's Youth Outreach Program, as most of the teen volunteers she had organized on the housing project had been directed there through that very program. She had always known that Costa had been a supporter of the program, but never realized that he was so actively involved with it. To work there in any capacity would be incredible.

Vasquez refreshed her inbox frequently and was dismayed when she had to leave her room for combat training the next morning and the documents Costa had spoken of had yet to arrive. She spent the day wondering if he had reconsidered sending it, and worrying that if it did come in, she wouldn't know how to adequately apply for the position.

But later that evening when she opened her inbox, there it was— not an opportunity to apply but an actual _job offer_. The position title was Civic Engagement Officer, and along with the position overview and a formal-looking document outlining the offer was a more casual note from Costa:

'Hey Vasquez, take a look and see what you think. Right now it would just be for a couple months of the year, so you could fit it in between deployments, but eventually there might be opportunities for a full-time position. Looking forward to hearing from you!'

Vasquez smiled to herself. It seemed almost too good to be true. The salary was significantly lower than what she could get from finally getting adequate payment as a marine, but to work even a couple months of the year would be an ideal balance.

A sudden knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and she opened it to see Drake. He held two mugs and a bottle of whiskey and she was instantly reminded of their first night aboard the Argo. A flashback of their younger selves nervously sipping whiskey in her room, before their very first mission came to mind and she smiled.

"Whoa, what's that on your face?" He asked her jokingly, and she realized with regret that it must have been a while since she had even smiled in front of him.

"Shut up and get in here," she said and pulled him inside.

He promptly tossed the mugs and the bottle onto the bed and he wrapped her in a hug and kissed her deeply. It had been a while.

When they parted, he looked down at her and said, "I'm surprised to see you in such good spirits, you seemed so off today— I was actually coming by to check on you."

"I know, I'm sorry." she replied, imagining herself from his perspective, her constant moodiness. "But I got some good news today… I'm still a bit unsure about it but I think it will be good…"

"Tell me. Is it about your parole?" Drake asked as they sat on her bed and he poured a couple fingers of Irish whiskey into each of the mugs.

"Kind of," she smiled. "I reached out to Costa and he said he would give me a good reference."

"Great!" He held up his mug to her and she tapped her mug off of his and took a swig.

"And… He connected me with a job offer." Vasquez smiled. "It's with the USCM's Youth Outreach Program. So far it would just be for the two months after this mission is over, but it would open the door to other opportunities after that."

Drake nodded as he sipped from the mug.

"I have to get parole, Drake," she continued, thinking about the job offer being rescinded because she wasn't eligible to work. "I feel like so much is riding on it now."

"You know, a lot of people don't get it on the first try," said Drake. "If you don't get it this year, there's always next year."

"Well…" said Vasquez evenly, "if I don't get it on the first go, I'd have to wait at least one year to reapply again, which means at least another year and a half to two years of waiting before I could even get another hearing."

"Don't worry about it, babe. I mean, would that really be the worst thing? I'm not even eligible for parole until late next year."

Vasquez stared at him in dismay. "What does that have to do with it?"

"I just saying, if you didn't get parole, nothing would change, you and I would still spend those months doing community work. You enjoyed that right?"

"Yeah, except I wouldn't be legally able to accept this position, I wouldn't get paid…"

"We've always been fine living on our allowance, we've always gotten by," Drake offered lightly.

"It's not the same thing," Vasquez replied, frowning now. "I'm done with this life of being considered a criminal. I like being a marine, but is it too much to want to get paid for risking my life? Is it too much to want to take two months of the year to work with at-risk youth? You know, to try to prevent them from turning out like us?"

Drake looked slightly put-out. "There's nothing wrong with that, babe, but maybe just don't accept any job offers until you know you're actually out on parole, or else you're just setting yourself up for disappointment."

"It's too late," said Vasquez defiantly. "I already accepted the offer." It was a lie, but she wanted to communicate to Drake how much the job meant to her.

Drake was silent, and his jaw tensed and she could tell he was upset.

"Why did you do that?" he asked in a low voice and she was surprised by the resentment and disappointment in his response. "You accepted it and you didn't even bother to tell me first?"

Vasquez stared at him incredulously, wondering if she had heard him right. "Are you seriously suggesting that I should have asked your permission before making a decision about my own life?"

Drake stared at her angrily. "Not 'ask permission', no, just give me a little heads up about it. That's what couples do, Vaz, they consult each other before they make big decisions!"

"Well at what point did we become a 'couple'?" Vasquez asked skeptically. You know, it seems to me that we're always just doing what you want to do. You tell me to do something and I follow, is that it? _Stick with you, join the marine corps with you, sleep with you, change my plans for you. _You say we can't be friends unless we're sleeping together and what do I do? I go with it! Goddammit, I'm not even able to smoke in front of you!"

"You have a problem with me wanting to be with you, me looking out for you? All I've ever tried to do was make a better life for us!"

"Yeah, if part of that 'better life' means I just forget my plans to actually do something that matters to me. I remember you once saying that we were the ones in control of our own fate. Did you mean we were each in charge of our own lives or that you would just assume control for the both of us?"

Drake looked furious now, and Vasquez had never seen him so angry before. "You know what I remember?" His deep voice was escalating into a yell. "Getting you into the Corps, saving your ungrateful ass from a decade of prison!"

"You think you saved me, Drake?!" They were both standing now.

"Yeah, I do! If it wasn't for me, you'd either be dead or some inmate's little bitch!"

His words hit like a thousand knives.

"You self-centred bastard! Is that the story you want to go with? That I never would have made it on my own without you?!"

Drake shrugged condescendingly. "If the shoe fits, Vaz."

Livid, she lashed out and pushed him with both hands on his chest. The mug he was still holding splashed whiskey onto the floor. "Get out!" she yelled.

Drake shook his head. "And here you go getting all crazy with your temper. I fucking wonder why I even bother sometimes."

"OUT!"

As her fury mounted, so did his, and he took the mug that was in his hand and slammed it down to the floor. It exploded from the impact with a crash, sending ceramic pieces everywhere.

The action startled Vasquez and she was momentarily speechless. But Drake was gone out of her room a second later. She forcefully shut the door behind him and paced the room, livid, ceramic pieces crunching under her feet.

She felt like her world had suddenly been turned upside down, the idea of their friendship suddenly uprooted and impossible to trust. She was tired of doing things his way, done with him taking credit for her own survival.

She heard the clicks of a few doors opening in the corridor and she instantly realized that the others had likely heard their yelling, the mug smashing.

After a moment there was a knock on her door. When she ignored it at first, she heard Ferro's voice on the other side. "Vaz? Can you open the door?" Finally she did and Ferro looked in. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Wanna talk?" asked Ferro.

"No. Thanks, Ferro. Everything's fine." Vasquez replied. And Ferro nodded, knowing her well enough to know not to push too hard.

After she closed the door, she heard Hudson's voice in the hall outside her room, "What happened?" Then Ferro's voice, telling him not to worry. Vasquez moved closer to the door and listened.

"Is she okay?" Hudson asked, concern in his voice. She assumed Ferro had nodded because she didn't hear anything for a while, until she heard the sound of Ferro's door clicking closed.

But the silence that followed told her that Hudson was still outside. If she opened the door, she knew he would be right in front of her, standing in his night shirt and boxers. It was a strange feeling knowing that he was lingering outside her room and she wondered if he was going to knock or say something through her door, but then she heard another clicking sound coming from a couple doors down as he returned to his room.

.

The following day was awkward on multiple levels. As Vasquez walked into the locker room, dressed for combat practice, she heard voices lower in volume as she entered, and she suspected the others had been talking about the fight they had overheard the evening before.

Drake walked in closely behind her, poorly timed as they both arrived at their adjacent lockers without greeting, both opening them in silence at the same time.

Vasquez felt satisfied with the way her locker door, when opened, blocked Drake's face from her view. She remained shielded behind the barrier, taking her time to hang up her hoodie, organize her locker contents so that she wouldn't have to talk to Drake or anyone else before the start of practice.

But then Dietrich came over to her. "Hey Vasquez, you ready for tonight?"

Dietrich's tone was extra gentle and she knew that the field medic was really coming over to check her overall disposition and mental state, making sure everything was alright.

"That's still happening, is it?" Vasquez answered monotonously.

They had been scheduled to receive the following day off, and accordingly, the crew had made plans for a night on the town that evening. They had made reservations for dinner, selected a lively bar in the colonized metropolis of Gliese 667 Cc, even rented hotel rooms so that they could stay over. Drake had booked a room for the both of them.

"You're still coming, right?" Deitrich asked, her voice slightly hushed.

Vasquez kept her eyes on the contents of her locker. She felt uncomfortable that everyone in the room knew her business at that moment and palpable discomfort at the way Dietrich was speaking to her so carefully, carrying out a rudimentary psych evaluation with her eyes.

In an act of defiance, Vasquez looked back at Dietrich brightly, "Yeah, I'll be there."

When Dietrich had left, Vasquez shut her locker to reveal Drake on the other side of the door. He gave her a begrudging look.

"I'm still going out tonight," she told him under her breath. "And if you are too, then that means we're stuck in the same room… let's just get through today and we'll talk later tonight."

"Fine," Drake glowered.

"Fine."

.

The hotel room was nice. In better circumstances, it might have made for a romantic night between the two of them. Instead, as soon as they checked in and walked into the room, Vasquez threw her bag down and gave a laugh in spite of herself.

"I wasn't expecting _one bed,_" she said.

"Well I wasn't expecting you to go off the rails last night."

"Okay," said Vasquez, throwing her hands up. "Let's just get everything out in the open here, now's our chance."

"You're treating me like I'm some kind of villain, when really I'm just trying to look out for you," began Drake, not needing much of a prompt to get started.

"I get that, Drake, but what I have a problem with is the way you can be so manipulative, like you're only ever happy when you're the one calling the shots."

"You're making shit up, Vaz! You're blowing something up out of nothing. I know you're just stressed because of your parole hearing—"

"It's not about that! This has been going on since we were young, and you… you can't even see it!"

"See what?!"

"That I'm fucking suffocating, Drake!" she found herself saying.

She hadn't planned the words, but as she pressed on, she could heard herself speaking the truth, realization coming to the forefront of her mind as she verbalized the feelings she had been keeping inside for far too long.

"You don't seem to notice that I'm no longer that kid you met in Juvie, and it feels so goddamn_ stifling_. "

He stared at her, frowning, and she wondered if he was even listening to what she was saying or if he was just thinking of the next thing to say.

Vasquez continued. "I need to be free from it all, Drake. I need to take some time away from us so I can just be me."

"What are you saying, Vaz? You wanna break up?" Drake asked incredulously.

Vasquez nodded regretfully, "Yeah… I think I do." She watched as the expression on Drake's face seemed to morph from anger to one of sadness. "I just don't see any other way," she continued. "I don't want to lose your friendship, but if taking time apart means we can no longer be friends... then I have to make that sacrifice."

Drake was shaking his head, reaching for her hands, a look of fear crossing his face now and she knew he hadn't expected this. She hadn't even anticipated that this was the way things were going to go, but she knew it was the right thing.

"Vaz, listen, we can talk through this. We don't need to make any rash decisions here right now. We could put this whole thing on—on hold and just enjoy our night…"

He was holding her hands tightly now trying to keep her from pulling away, but she ultimately did and took a step back from him. "I'm sorry, Drake," she said sadly and she disappeared into the washroom and locked the door.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub, feeling numb. Through the door, she could hear Drake huffing and pacing around in the room. Shuffling things around loudly until finally she heard the door to the room shut and she suspected he had gone down to the hotel bar.

She drew in a steadying breath and stood. She knew she had taken a step in the right direction.

With a bit of time left before their dinner reservation, Vasquez dressed in ripped black jeans and a black tank top and even put on a bit of makeup. Despite feeling a bit raw inside, she looked in the mirror and felt confident.

As she turned off the light and exited, she knew she was leaving the room a stronger person than when she walked in.

. . .

"Open the hatch, Bishop! Let me down there."

Vasquez was done with sitting around. No matter how much it hurt to walk, she had to do something to help.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Vasquez!"

"What d'you mean you can't?" she asked him, suddenly livid. Bishop brought the dropship up and while she had no view to the outside from where she stood, she felt the ship leave the rooftop and veer to the right. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"Three and a half minutes, Vasquez, and then we're all dead. It'll take almost that entire time to get down to the sublevels and get back up—"

"I have to try!"

"It's too late," said Bishop sternly, and she had never seen him take control of a situation like that before. "Our only hope is that Ripley and Newt are already on the freight elevator up."

Vasquez grunted in frustration and threw her pulse rifle down to the floor. She knew he was right, that if anything, she would just hinder their chances for survival by occupying an elevator car. She swore.

"We're not giving up on them yet!" said Bishop adamantly. "I'll circle around. We've got three minutes. If they come out within the next two, we'll go back for them."

Vasquez sat back down in the seat and closed her eyes, the stress of not being able to do anything helpful weighing on her.

But after a minute, Bishop's voice startled her and her eyes shot open. "There's movement! I see them!" he called.

Bishop swerved the ship back toward the rooftop, turbulence rocking the aircraft as debris ricocheted off the hull and explosions created violent updrafts in air current. Vasquez held onto her surroundings for support.

As the hatch door began to open, she jumped up and grabbed the pulse rifle from the floor.

"Closing in, get ready to help them up," Bishop called back to her. "And Vasquez… you'll never guess who they've got with them."

. . .

She watched Hudson as he sat alone at a table in the colony bar, casually sipping the last half of a pint, looking lost and a bit like he would rather be anywhere else. Vasquez imagined that was the same look she had on her face at that moment.

Vasquez stood in front of Drake now, hearing him slur and vent his frustrations.

Drake had a lot to drink at dinner; barely talking, barely eating, just drinking. So by the time they arrived at the bar, Vasquez wasn't surprised that Drake had pulled her aside to talk things through.

It was difficult to focus on what he was saying—she already knew what she wanted and nothing he said was going to change her mind. So as Drake talked, Vasquez found herself looking past his shoulder, watching her other crewmates in the bar as they went about their night.

Across the room, Frost was talking with a couple of women and one of them was trying to catch Hudson's attention. The young woman was beautiful, with a pretty smile and long, light coloured hair. Just the sight of someone so attractive and put together made Vasquez feel inexplicably uncomfortable in her own skin.

Vasquez looked back at Drake and he was now almost pleading with her to reconsider. A small, insecure part of her psyche nagged at her: here was someone who truly cared about her, despite her shortcomings. What if Drake was the only person who would ever feel this way about her? The only person who would ever find her attractive?

She pushed the thoughts aside. "I just need some space Drake, please, just give me that."

As she walked away from Drake, her earlier confidence felt shaken and she no longer knew if she was being strong or just stupid.

While there were plenty of places she could have gone to get space from Drake, Vasquez chose to sit down at the table next to Hudson, feeling like the only company she could handle at that moment was that of someone feeling as miserable as she did.

.

It was convenient when Hudson ignored the pretty girl who was making eyes at him, and instead went with Vasquez to the bar, where they settled on a couple barstools with the intention of getting drunk.

"I'll take a whiskey, Tennessee is fine," answered Hudson when the bartender asked what he was having.

"Dude, no," said Vasquez and she turned to the bartender. "Give him the Kentucky Double-oaked. Make that two."

Hudson looked impressed. "I never knew you were into bourbon," he said. Vasquez gave a laugh and Hudson looked perplexed. "What?"

"Nothing," replied Vasquez. "I just never assumed we knew a lot about each other to begin with, so why would it surprise you to find something out?"

"I dunno," Hudson said with a shrug. "Okay… Tell me something I don't know about you."'

Vasquez rolled her eyes.

"No, seriously," continued Hudson, "for two people who work so closely together, you're right, we don't know a hell of a lot about each other. Tell me something about yourself—and it can't be that you're a badass and you'd beat my ass in a fight, or that you just love sharing personal details about yourself—that's all stuff I know already. Has to be something I don't know."

"Okay," Vasquez said slowly. "On my fourteenth birthday, my father was shot and killed in front of me."

She had said it for the shock value, an attempt to make Hudson regret asking. And it seemed to have received the intended response as Hudson sat stunned for a moment.

"Jeez Vaz, is that true?" replied Hudson, a hand going to his forehead, "I thought you were going to say you ain't ever been on a boat, or something like that. That's fucked up. You have a sister, right?"

Vasquez gave a nod. "A little sister. Carmen. We grew up separately and after my dad died, I went back to Juarez to get her, but she was already involved in a street gang. That's why I shot someone: to try to get her out… Then I forced her to take my passport and flee to the States and that was the last time I ever saw her."

She could have said more, but she decided to stop there. Hudson and the rest of the crew did have some knowledge about her past, but still, she expected him to look more overwhelmed by all of the information she had just shared. Instead he looked back at her with sympathy. "Shit, that's rough," he responded and he picked up his glass and took a sip of bourbon.

"Your turn," Vasquez stated. "What don't I know?"

"Well, I'm a _Taurus_," he joked. "No, I dunno. I guess if we're goin' down that road..." A flush came over his cheeks as his smile faded. "When I was a kid, my mom died, and my dad went a bit nuts after that… He started beating on me and my older brother. Things just got worse as we got older and finally my brother couldn't take it anymore and he left home, left me there with my dad. We've barely spoken since."

Vasquez noticed how his body language changed as he talked about his family, his shoulders coming up, arms crossed over his body protectively, holding his elbows.

"I don't usually tell people about that," said Hudson. "I moved out as soon as I could, kinda made my own family, ya know?" Hudson breathed and drank his bourbon.

Vasquez did the same.

"Wow. Well that was a super depressing conversation," Hudson said, his demeanour relaxing a bit, his grin making a comeback. He drained his glass and hailed the bartender. "Another round, please? Thanks man."

He turned to Vasquez and smiled, "So, now that we both know each other a bit better I think it's time we got to the really important questions… ready for it? _Frost or Hicks?" _

"What?" Vasquez asked incredulously.

"If you had to choose, who would it be? Frost or Hicks?"

"Choose for what?"

Hudson gave her an amused look, "what do you think?"

"Frost."

"Really…" said Hudson, brightly. "Can't say I expected that, but yeah, I can see it."

Vasquez scoffed. "Okay… Ferro or Dietrich?"

Hudson looked like he was instantly realizing that his game had backfired. "Shit. Ah, come on."

"Man, did you not see that coming? That's how this game works," she said with a smile.

"Dietrich," he replied and Vasquez raised her eyebrows as Hudson lowered his voice, "Okay, if it was a one time thing maybe Ferro, but if it was like, _ongoing_, then Dietrich."

"That's weirdly specific. You've obviously thought this through," Vasquez laughed.

"Shut up, I'm just thinking about it now. Okay, Crowe or Spunkmeyer?"

"Tie."

"There's no _ties _."

"Hawkins or Samson?"

"...Tie."

They both started laughing.

"Man, remember Hawkins?" said Hudson thinking back to their earlier days and the larger crew. "I remember you having to grapple with her on your first day of training… you kicked her ass, though—twice."

"I remember kicking your ass that day too."

"Yeah, don't worry, I remember. Don't think my pride ever fully recovered."

"Me or Hawkins?" Vasquez asked quickly and without thinking about it, Hudson automatically replied, "you."

He immediately looked embarrassed when he realized what it was he had said and Vasquez laughed heartily, "I can't believe that worked!"

"Whatever," said Hudson with an embarrassed smile. His face was a deep shade of red. "Fine, two can play that game: me or Karim?"

"You," Vasquez replied easily, "Karim would probably try to tell me I was doing it wrong."

Hudson burst out laughing. "Probably. Nice kid, but man, he can be a downer."

A brief silence between them followed and she wondered if Hudson was feeling any awkwardness around the fact they both just admitted that sleeping with one another would not be their last choice.

Across the room, they could hear Karim's voice arguing with one of the women Frost had brought to the table. "All I'm saying is that colony life is not real life. You need to visit Earth if you hope to get any sort of education."

Vasquez and Hudson both cringed.

"Smooth," laughed Hudson. "Not too late to change your mind."

"I stand by my answer."

.

Vasquez honestly could not remember a time when she had laughed so much.

It was possible she had been looking for an excuse to let loose and enjoy herself, or it might have just been the combination of hard liquor and bad jokes. It seemed they were both in need of a distraction, both welcoming the change in mood.

She and Hudson would often joke around or tease one another, but tonight seemed different. Conversation flowed effortlessly, alcohol breaking down any barriers that may have otherwise been present, fueling banter and leading into punchlines that would not normally be so funny, feeding off each other's sense of humour and tipsiness.

Vasquez had been somewhat surprised to hear about the difficult time Hudson had growing up. She had never considered the fact that they actually might have had a lot in common, and even in Hudson's brief description of his upbringing, she could pinpoint the similarities between their stories: the death of a parent, the lack of care from the other parent, the absence of stability, of love, the connection with a sibling as their only consolation—then losing them too, suddenly estranged and even more alone than before.

Maybe it was those commonalities that was leading to this new level of connection between the two of them. Maybe it was just nice to talk to someone different from Drake.

Now, she paused before taking her next tequila shot. Hudson threw back his own shot quickly, swallowing hard and making a face.

Vasquez was feeling drunk now, unable to remember why they had switched to shots at all, and tequila for that matter.

Hudson turned to her, "One shot too many?" he asked, eyeing her still-full glass. "Don't drink it if you don't want." His voice was sincere.

"You'd like that wouldn't you?" she retorted.

"Do you think I'm tryna outdrink you?" he asked with a laugh but he actually looked a bit hurt at the thought. "We're just hanging out, it ain't a competition… Even if it was, I'd be on your side, rooting for ya. You know that, right?"

Vasquez suddenly felt awkward. It was like she was a bull in a china shop, always plowing forward aggressively, shattering everything around her, unsure how to even handle something delicate without it crashing to the ground. For a moment, she wondered if she had ruined the moment of friendship they had been sharing.

But Hudson didn't seem to dwell on it. "Give me your hand."

"What?"

"Put out your hand," he said and he was already taking her right hand in his. "We need to come up with a shake, man." he said to her and she could see the drunkenness beginning to really show in his expression.

"You're high if you think we're going to make up our own handshake." She batted his hand away.

But Hudson rolled with it, incorporating the motion into the choreography of the shake, slapping the back of her hand with his and bumping the top and bottom of her hand with his fist. When she immediately tried to swat at his arm, he deftly mirrored the movement with his forearm, seamlessly working it into the gesture.

She tried not to laugh, but the entire thing was pure comedic perfection that she snorted with laughter, unable to fight her reaction.

Hudson looked gleeful as he held his hand out again and said, "Okay! Once more from the top," and Vasquez begrudgingly followed his lead in replicating the handshake that had just been accidentally created. The whole thing was an uncoordinated mess and Hudson added his own flourishes he wanted her to copy, and by the time they ended the shake, their hands clasped together in a tight grip, Vasquez was laughing so hard that she nearly fell off her bar stool. At that moment, she was glad her hand had been locked in his, because without him there to steady her, she most likely would have fallen to the floor.

It was embarrassing to think that something so stupid could be the highlight of her night, but the moment had been so genuine, so truly funny and sweet that it was as if a part of her had be awakened to something she had been missing.

As their laughter finally dissipated and dissolved slowly back into conversation, their exchange was cut short as Dietrich and Frost joined them at the bar.

Frost got the attention of the bartender and ordered a beer for him and Dietrich, commenting on how Vasquez and Hudson were laughing like a pair of hyenas.

"You trying to make Drake jealous or what?" Frost asked her when Hudson and Dietrich had begun talking amongst themselves.

"What are you talking about?" she responded, a bit taken aback by the comment.

Frost shrugged his broad shoulders, "Just saying, I don't usually see you laugh that much... and with Hudson?" His eyes went over to Drake who was sitting at the table with the rest of their crew, looking directly down into a pint glass.

Vasquez frowned in indignance. "What, I'm not allowed to enjoy my night because Drake is being miserable? You really want to go there, Frost?" She could hear her tone grow threatening.

Immediately Frost looked like he regretted getting involved. "Alright, sorry, forget I said anything."

But the words were little consolation as she already felt her spirits dampen. Vasquez considered the full shot of tequila that had been sitting in front of her and she swiftly brought it to her lips and knocked it back without effort.

"I'm changing my answer to _Hicks _," she said aloud, and Frost looked perplexed. Beside her, Dietrich's hand travelled up Hudson's arm and she knew he didn't hear her comment.

Vasquez ordered another shot miserably. She hated the idea of Frost and the others thinking she was trying to hurt Drake on purpose. Combined with the sight of Drake wallowing in his pint, and Dietrich completely occupying Hudson's attention, Vasquez knew the feeling of the night had taken a turn. All that remained was the feeling of alcohol mixing with disappointment in the pit of her stomach.

.

For the remainder of the night, Vasquez didn't even feel like drinking. When the bartender poured the shot she had ordered, she discreetly paid her tab and went to sit back down, seeing that Dietrich had taken her seat. Vasquez set the tequila shot down in front of Dietrich, "Well, you might as well take this too," she said to her.

Hudson cheered and Dietrich held up the shot to Vasquez in thanks, interpreting the drink as a gesture of goodwill.

Vasquez intended to leave and go back to the hotel, but she remembered that Drake—whether on purpose or by accident—had taken both the room keys.

She turned to the table where Drake sat, and saw that he was currently engaged in an arm wrestle with Crowe, a matchup that Drake would have likely dominated had he not been so intoxicated.

"Elbow on the table, Drake," Karim commented, clearly struggling to enforce the rules of engagement in his self-appointed role of referee. "Drake! Seriously, man, your elbow needs to stay on the—Dude! Look where your elbow is!"

Vasquez rolled her eyes and turned away, not even possessing a modicum of the patience required to go near the situation. She doubted anyone would even notice if she slipped outside for some air, so that was what she did.

As she walked the sidewalks of the bustling neighbourhood outside the bar, she wondered what it would be like to live in a place where humanity got a second chance; a fresh start at developing a modern society. A place where satellites simulated night, weather was scheduled, everyone knew when it would rain and what temperature it would be every day of their lives. The streets felt safe and welcoming; narrow, as they were not made to accommodate cars, but people and cyclists; lined with tropical trees and overflowing planters of brightly coloured flowers. Roads were named things like Nelson Mandela Avenue, Rachel Carson Road, Marsha P. Johnson Way and it reminded her that while the colony may have been established by Weyland-Yutani, it was the people living here that ultimately brought it to life and made it what it was.

Without giving it too much thought, Vasquez found an outdoor communication booth, swiped her payment card and used the tablet to log into her USCM portal. In her contacts, she looked up the number for Sergeant Costa and called him.

She was expecting to leave him a transmission, forgetting that from this exoplanet, there were more developed lines of communication, and she was surprised when he answered, his face appearing on the screen.

"Sergeant Costa," she greeted him, suddenly mortified that she was calling him in her quasi-drunk state from the loud streets of the entertainment district of Gliese 667 Cc.

"Vasquez!" Costa greeted her cheerfully. The image was clearer than she expected, given the astronomically large expanse of space between them, his response only slightly delayed. His face looked tired and there was more grey in his beard than when she had last seen him. She could tell he was sitting at his desk in his small, messy office of the Argo where he would often work late into the night. Currently separated by lightyears, it was anyone's guess what time he was on.

"You must be on 667 Cc," he continued jovially. I recognize the ramen place behind you. Man, they know how to make a good bowl of noodles!"

Vasquez smiled. "Yes, that's right. Sorry sir, I just had a spare minute, I was just going to leave you a message," she said. "I'd like to accept the job offer."

"Well I'm glad to hear that, Vasquez! But shouldn't you be off somewhere enjoying your night instead? I hear Apone is pretty stingy when it comes to giving nights off."

"I probably should be," she agreed with a laugh. "It's just this place, it got me thinking…" she felt her drunkness begin to hinder her ability to communicate.

"Ah, Gliese 667 is great, isn't it?" Costa said wistfully, not letting on whether he could tell she was drunk or not.

"It is, Sir," Vasquez pressed on, remembering her point. "But it makes me think that we've always been so focused on taking care of things on other colonies, when so many things back on Earth are complete shit. It's like we'd rather start something fresh than fix what we've done wrong back at home."

There was a pause and Costa began nodding his head in agreement. "You're completely right about that. It's the reason I started the youth outreach program."

Vasquez felt surprised. " You started that program, Sir? I thought you were just...involved."

Costa laughed. "Well, I usually keep that part pretty close to the chest. But now you know why I sent you the offer— I really care about the program, Vasquez, and I try to ensure we only hire the very best. I know you'll be perfect for it, especially after your work on the Houston community housing project."

Vasquez beamed. "Well… thanks. I can't wait to be a part of it… of course, as you know, I have some obstacles to overcome first."

"Your parole?"

Vasquez nodded.

"Don't worry about that. I know once they meet you and hear from your references, they'll see exactly what I see."

She nodded again, feeling hesitant. "Sir?"

"What is it Vasquez?"

"Can I ask… What on earth do you see in me?" She laughed self-deprecatingly. She suddenly felt like the child back in Juvie, self conscious, uncertain of herself. "Don't get me wrong, Sarge, this position is all I could ever want, but I guess I was just wondering why you wouldn't go with someone else, given my… history.

"Jenette," said Costa and he was no longer in Sergeant mode, he was talking to her as a friend. "I see in you what I've seen from the very beginning. You're determined to make something of yourself. But also, you care. You want to make a difference."

He took a breath and somehow through the screen, looked her deeply in the eyes.

"Things in the past have not always come easy for you. The fact that you've faced those challenges just makes your accomplishments something to be even more proud of. It's time that you allow yourself to acknowledge your own worth."

Vasquez looked back at Costa, unaccustomed to hearing such kind words. She didn't know what to say.

.

When Vasquez finally made it back to the bar, the level of drunkenness in her teammates had noticeably increased.

Ferro and Spunkmeyer had begun breaking out some questionable moves on the dance floor and Karim was looking unhappy, a dark wet patch down the front of his shirt and jeans, most likely from spilling a pint of beer. Hudson was back at the table looking lost again, except this time, Dietrich was beside him, rubbing his back.

As expected, the moment Drake spotted her, he came over to her. Surprisingly, he seemed slightly less drunk than he had at the beginning of the night, almost as if he was starting to sober up from the multitude of drinks he had with dinner.

"Can we just talk, Vaz?" he slurred, pulling at her arm.

She yanked her arm away from him but didn't leave. "We've talked already, Drake. Twice since we got here, what else do you have to say?"

"We did? Here at the bar?" He asked and she could tell he truly couldn't even recall their earlier conversations. "Well, can we talk again?"

"I'm listening," said Vasquez with a sigh.

"I want things to be good between us," he said unhappily. "I want things to be back to the way they were when we first started out… I just can't picture my life without you."

His words, while still simplified and obscured by alcohol, were revealing. Suddenly, she considered their dynamic in a new light, all the scattered pieces of their past fights now coming together, providing her with a new sense of understanding.

"You know, all this time I had it wrong, Drake," she said slowly. "Here I was, thinking that you were trying to control me, that all you wanted was for me to follow everything that you did. But it's not that, is it? At some point that all changed and now it's you that's been following me ."

Drake gave a bitter laugh, and shook his head.

"That's why you were so upset when I decided to do my own thing—you don't want to encourage me to go off on my own because you rely on me for everything."

He continued to shake his head as he turned away from her and she knew she was right, that she had hit a sore spot for him.

"I can't be held responsible for your happiness, Drake," she said to his back. "It's too much."

As she and Drake walked in their opposite directions, a sudden scuffle broke out towards the front of the bar.

The second she looked over, there was a flash of movement and she saw Hudson in the midst of the fray, now doubled over, hit hard in the mouth by a rather large and surly looking colonist. To her surprise, Hudson quickly retaliated, lashing out with pent up anger until the two of them were on the floor, Hudson on top, punching until his fist was coated in blood.

In an instant, Hicks was on Hudson, pulling him off the colonist and trying to restrain him. The whole thing felt surreal. Hudson was generally so good-natured, so it was unusual to see him acting with such aggression. It was as if he didn't even know what he was doing, because as soon as soon as Hicks released him, he seemed to look down at his bloody hands, fear in his eyes as he scanned the bar to see who had witnessed his act of violence. Guiltily, he began backing away, and when Hicks tried to rein him back with placatory gestures, Hudson pulled away and staggered out of the bar.

.

A few of them tried to follow Hudson, but the streets were crowded so they returned with no luck. Vasquez decided to leave shortly after that.

After their talk, Drake had gone back to the bar and began drinking again with astounding resolve. He seemed intent on drinking the bar dry, and she didn't want to interrupt his efforts, so she left, heading back to the hotel on her own. She still didn't have a key, but she decided she might be able to persuade the staff at the front desk to issue her a new one.

When she walked up to the front gate of the hotel, she saw someone outside, lying against the wall. It took her a moment to realize it was Hudson.

She knelt in front of him and jostled his arm. "Hudson!"

His eyes opened and took a while to focus in on her. "Hmmm?" he asked drunkenly. There was a split in his bottom lip and blood was smeared down one side of his chin.

"What are you doing lying here?"

He gave an exaggerated shrug, "Can't find my room."

"What's your room number?"

"I don't know…" he shook his head in despair. "It could be any number of numbers."

Vasquez sighed, trying to maintain her patience. "Come on, get up, let's get you to bed." She slipped her arm around him and tried to lift him up and he was dead weight, but eventually she got him to his feet.

"Vaz, did I hurt someone tonight?" His eyes had grown wide and sorrowful.

"What?" said Vasquez in confusion until she remembered the fight. "The other guy's fine," she replied in her best comforting tone, as she struggled to lead him towards the lobby in hopes that hotel staff might be able to look up his room number and let him into his room as well.

She stumbled under his weight. "For God's sake, can you focus on walking straight?" she asked, looking up at him and he was staring down at her and grinning. "What?"

"You're sooo cute when you're annoyed," he said with sincerity.

"Are you looking for another punch in the face tonight?"

"No."

"Then you're gonna wanna stop talking."

"Okay."

Hudson was silent for a moment, but then seemed to forget and he tilted his head towards her "Vaz, you're my friend right? Not just my partner?"

"Yeah, Hudson, we're friends."

"Yeah, thought so," he confirmed happily.

They had just about reached the front desk when Dietrich appeared in the lobby beside them. "Looks like you could use a hand with that," she mused.

"Oh god, yes," replied Vasquez in relief and Dietrich took the other side of Hudson. "He can't remember his room number."

"We can just take him to my room, I doubt Ferro is coming home tonight."

They got him onto the bed and right away he closed his eyes. Vasquez undid his boots and dropped them to the floor, then she went to get him a glass of water from the bathroom. When she returned with the water, Dietrich had already pulled off his shirt and was undoing his belt.

Vasquez put the glass beside his bed as Dietrich slid off Hudson's jeans.

"Uh, ok, looks like you've got things under control here," said Vasquez, feeling a bit out of place. "I guess I should go figure out a way into my room, Drake's got both room keys."

"I think you should let Drake sober up on his own tonight," said Drietrich as she brought Hudson's legs onto the bed and, with effort, positioned him onto his side. "When I left, he was drinking like he was trying to break a record. Just stay here tonight, Vaz."

Vasquez contemplated the idea of going back to the hotel room with Drake, where he would be a messy, unhappy drunk, likely wanting to rehash the same fight they had already had multiple times that night. The thought made her feel exhausted. "Yeah, okay. Thanks, Dietrich."

Drained and completely worn-out from the long day, Vasquez took off her jeans and climbed into the second bed. She moved all the way to the side of the bed, leaving space for Dietrich. She was slightly surprised when Dietrich climbed into the bed with Hudson. She felt a bit silly that she hadn't expected it, given the way Dietrich had been blatantly flirting with him all night.

She couldn't help but watch as Dietrich gently pulled the covers up over Hudson's shoulders and tucked him in. It was clear to see that she cared about him.

.

The following week, they moved to a new stage of reconnaissance. They worked almost around the clock, taking shifts and camping out in the Darkside of the exoplanet so they could be ready to zero in on new leads. The environment in the camp was cold and oxygen levels were low even inside the tent, making it hard to concentrate and stay focused.

Squads were put on alternating shifts, taking turns to work and sleep, only a makeshift curtain separating the sleeping quarters within the large canvas tent. But despite their mostly opposite schedules, tensions remained high between her and Drake, and although they acted professionally in front of their fellow crew members, the tight quarters seemed to make everything feel worse between them. The entire situation was beginning to wear on Vasquez and she felt as if she was going to snap from frustration and boredom.

It was several days into the surveillance work that Vasquez woke in the middle of their sleep shift to the feeling of something pressed against her sleeping bag.

Hudson, who had been sleeping next to her, had rolled towards her, his body against her back, his arm sliding over her, pulling her in close. By his breathing, she knew he was asleep, dreaming of someone else, yet for some reason, instead of pushing him away, she pretended to be asleep and she let him hold her.

She knew it was strange behaviour on her part, but there was something so comforting about it that she wanted him to stay there—his warm, muscular arm draped heavily over her waist, his hand resting against her stomach, his chest, half out of the sleeping bag, pressing against her back, adding heat to her own body, instantly eradicating the ever-present chill that she had just grown accustomed to. The feeling of finally being warm felt amazing, but it was more than that: she knew that part of her liked the feeling of him being close to her.

In the morning, when they both woke, she felt Hudson swiftly sit up, no doubt shocked and embarrassed to find himself cuddling up to her. When she looked back at him, he apologized promptly, recoiling, clearly expecting her to yell at him. But she didn't. She couldn't even save face by pretending to be mad at him. It wasn't his fault.

Vasquez found herself sleeping next to Hudson each night, wondering if the same thing would happen again, almost wanting it to. But it didn't and they continued to sleep side by side—close enough to feel the warmth of the other, but never close enough to touch. Eventually, she would always drift off to sleep, wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

She attributed it to their newfound friendship, the fact that he seemed to be taking extra time to help and encourage her. Recon and surveillance had never been her strong suit, and she found the work to be slow and ill-suited to her strengths. But Hudson always seemed to check in with her, helping her with an assignment or saying something to try to make her laugh. And instead of feeling annoyed by him, his presence actually made her feel more calm.

Despite complaining of boredom, Hudson seemed to excel at every task. As their Combat Technician, technical work was his specialty, so she was glad to have him there to help her out.

To his credit, Hudson seemed to be putting aside whatever had been troubling him for the past several weeks and began taking charge more, leading the crew and teaching them how to use the technologies at their disposal. His technical expertise was impressive and he was even guiding Apone from time to time.

The leadership looked good on him and while the darkness, cold and monotony seemed to be getting to everyone else, Hudson seemed to thrive from being almost constantly immersed in work.

It was Hudson who caught a glitch in the surveillance footage Vasquez was meant to be reviewing. He generously gave her a pass, pretending her mistake was not a big deal, passing up the opportunity to take credit for the find, humbly saying, "Vasquez has a lead in the footage," until Vasquez had to bashfully admit to the others it was Hudson who found it.

But when the lead ultimately led to a probable location for their target and the directive was to infiltrate, a feeling of apprehension set in amongst the crew.

As they loaded onto the dropship in preparation to raid the site, everyone was quiet. There was tension in the air; unspoken hostility towards the Company and their Lieutenant who had made the order, only thinking about the bottom line and not bothering to think about the lives that were at risk.

She knew they were all feeling underprepared to perform a tactical invasion of a heavily- armed hub of criminal activity, on a site that they had little knowledge of. And although they had formed a pretty good impromptu plan, there were a lot of unknown factors, and Vasquez knew from experience that when the team lacked confidence, things were quick to fall apart.

In the seat across from her in the APC, Hudson's eyes were shut, his jaw set, with his knee moving rapidly up and down. She could tell he was nervously going over the plan in his head, replaying the details of the technology and communication-heavy strategy that largely relied on him to execute. The pressure was on.

Something lightly grazed her hand and she felt the familiar feeling of the folded paper note slipping into her grasp. She looked up at Drake in the seat next to her and he was looking down at her sadly.

"You brought this?" she asked quietly, her fingers closing over the soft, worn paper.

He shrugged, "I never leave it behind."

She slipped the note into the pocket of her pants where it would be safest. She nodded.

When her hand returned to her side, Drake hesitated only momentarily before he took her hand and held it tightly. She knew that he was thinking about the possibility of the mission turning bad. He looked stressed and he leaned his head back against the headrest, shifting his leg towards her so that the rest of the crew wouldn't see that they were holding hands.

For the entire way there, she didn't pull her hand away.

. . .

Vasquez was blind to what was happening outside of the dropship as Bishop hovered over the roof and opened the hatch beneath the hull.

She crouched by the hatch, ready to assist, and was instantly struck by the sheer heat that surged into the aircraft from the fiery, collapsing surroundings. Bracing herself, she inched down the steps of the hatch and Ripley and Newt came into view, running towards her.

Within seconds she was holding Newt's hands and then Newt was in her arms, her small frame trembling. Vasquez hoisted the girl up the rest of the stairs, onto the floor of the hull and then she turned back quickly to help Ripley.

She grasped Ripley's arm and was helping her up, but Ripley's attention was in the opposite direction and Vasquez followed her gaze.

She hadn't dared believe it, but it was just as Bishop had said: Hudson was alive.

Somehow, he had made it, escaped with Ripley and Newt and she couldn't imagine what he must have been through. He looked battered, like he had been through hell—and he probably had. His back was to her and he was limping, moving in the wrong direction.

That was when she saw what was pursuing them. The alien was horrific in appearance, enormous and powerful: the queen of the hive. A chill crept over her spine as she took in the image. It was moving towards Hudson now, but he wasn't firing. Why wasn't he firing?

She felt a dropping sensation in her stomach, her pace quickening as she realized that Hudson was trying to lead the giant creature away from the ship.

As Vasquez pulled Ripley up the stairs, Hudson turned his attention to the dropship. For the briefest of moments, his eyes met hers and her mind went blank.

She could only watch in horror as the scene in front of her unfolded, the massive alien lunging forward, tail whipping at full speed as Hudson stood trapped in the trajectory, empty rifle falling to the ground, tail hitting him in the chest, connecting with a sickening impact, sending him careening backward into the ground.

Vasquez felt something inside of her snap and without even knowing what she was doing, her hands brought forward her pulse rifle and she fired it with all the fury she held inside of her, round after round hitting her target, forcing it back, keeping it away from him.

As Bishop flew the ship to a closer range, Ripley stood on the stair beside her and also began to open fire on the alien with several well-aimed shots from the handgun.

Bishop intuitively set down the ship on the rooftop, close to where Hudson was laying, and Vasquez descended the stairs and limped to his side.

He was alive, gasping for breath, but still conscious.

"Hudson, can you hear me? Get up, Marine! On your feet!" she said desperately and fired again at the alien, shooting a grenade so that it detonated to the side of the creature.

The blast seemed to stun it, throwing it off balance. Vasquez seized the opportunity and grabbed a hold of Hudson's shoulder, trying to pull him up.

Ripley was now at Hudson's other shoulder helping to lift him and miraculously, he raised his head slightly and planted his feet on the ground, breathing hard and groaning from the effort. He held most of his own body weight, stumbling as they pulled him to the dropship stair.

Hudson had made it onto the first step as the queen alien charged towards them and Vasquez aimed her pulse rifle with one hand, her finger holding the trigger, trying to keep the enormous beast at bay. Then, she quickly mounted the stair as the dropship began to raise from the roof and the hatch began to close, and she and Ripley dragged Hudson up the steps and into the hull.

But even as the hatch closed, the dropship seemed to struggle and Vasquez exchanged an apprehensive look with Ripley. They were expecting the detonation at any second.

"Punch it, Bishop!" yelled Ripley to the cockpit.

The ship propelled forward, rocking and vibrating violently from the explosions around them. But then there was a feeling of increasing elevation and Vasquez held Hudson's hand in hers, hoping.

Light flooded the hull through the cockpit windshield of the dropship. The ship rumbled and rocked, the metal frame groaning under pressure. She felt the ship thrust forward as if the force of the detonation was pushing them outward into space. And then, quiet.

Sitting on one of the dropship seats, Ripley held Newt in her lap, a look of relief falling over her face.

On the floor of the hull, Vasquez remained kneeling next to Hudson, his hand still in hers. His eyes were barely open and his breathing sounded strained, but his blue eyes gazed up at her.

She could barely believe that Hudson was there in front of her, back from the dead.

After all the death she had experienced, for once, it would seem, she might actually be spared the pain of loss.

"We made it out," she told him. "Stay with me. It's gonna be okay."


	9. Hit or Miss

Vasquez undid the clasps of Hudson's armour, hoping it would ease his breathing.

She was next to him as he lay on the floor in the hull of the dropship, his eyes now blinking heavily, spending more time closed than open.

"Stay with me, Hudson, do you hear me?"

His armour was cracked from the impact of the hit, a large split running diagonally across the chest plate. As soon as she undid one side of the armour, the rest came off easily, almost breaking in half, and she peeled it off of him and tossed it aside.

Beneath it, a patch of blood had soaked through his BDUs and her hands went to it, putting pressure on the wound, not daring to open his shirt to see how bad it was.

"Hudson, look at me," she said sternly, "Stay awake, don't close your eyes."

But his eyes had already drifted closed and his ragged breathing grew quieter.

"Hudson!" She shook his shoulder, trying to rouse him. When his eyes stayed closed, Vasquez swore loudly.

She couldn't lose him—not after everything he had survived, not after he had just come back.

Ripley secured Newt into a chair and was at Vasquez's side quickly, checking Hudson's vital signs, her ear close to his chest to listen to his breathing. "Bishop, how long until we reach the Sulaco?" she yelled up to the cockpit.

"Twenty minutes," replied Bishop over the sound of the engine. "How's everyone doing back there?"

"Hanging on," replied Ripley hopefully and she turned to Vasquez. "Monitor his pulse and his breathing. Tell me if anything changes."

Ripley grabbed the first aid kit from beside Hicks' cot and proceeded to pull open Hudson's shirt. Beneath his rib cage, Vasquez could see the jagged laceration for only a second before Ripley held a patch of gauze overtop of it.

As Ripley secured the dressings over Hudson's stomach, Vasquez's fingers probed his neck for a pulse and her hand rested on his chest, gauging the rhythm of his breathing.

She shifted in place, feeling uncomfortable. The sensation of burning at her legs was steadily increasing, as if fresh acid was eating through her skin. She could almost feel the colour draining from her face as the burns throbbed, keeping pace with the heartbeat beneath her fingertips.

All at once, she was hit with a staggering sensation of déjà vu. It felt overwhelming, bringing with it flashbacks of years earlier and she was suddenly disoriented, momentarily forgetting where she was.

_Get it together_, she scolded herself, concentrating on Hudson's pulse and his breathing. But she felt dizzy and it was her that was now struggling to breathe.

"Vasquez?"

"Vitals are still good—" she managed to answer, but now the room was starting to spin.

"Vasquez, look at me," said Ripley.

She looked up at Ripley and frowned. "Yeah."

"You just called me _Dietrich_," responded Ripley, looking at her critically. "You're not looking so good. I think you should lie down."

Vasquez shook her head. "I'm fine," she said, but she was feeling her eyes skip within their sockets, trying to correct the spinning images around her. She knew that her injuries were finally catching up with her, her body's homeostatic mechanisms acting in response to her burns, trying to knock her out and take control.

She attempted to fight it, trying to get her eyes to focus, but when she stared down at her hands that were still on Hudson, it suddenly looked as though they were covered in blood. The blood seemed to be all around her, bubbling up from beneath her hands, squeezing out between her fingers.

Startled, she took her hands away from Hudson and held them out in front of her.

"Vasquez?"

The blood had disappeared but neon splotches now obscured her vision. She looked up, but couldn't see properly as darkness set in and she began to black out, feeling her head droop forward before she was gently eased backward onto the floor.

. . .

Vasquez would always remember Dietrich's panicked words crackling over the radio.

"We need backup in west tunnel, Drake's been hit!"

She remembered running hard, backtracking through the east tunnel, scared.

She didn't know how bad it was, but her mind pictured an array of scenarios, mostly of Drake bleeding out as she tried to make her way to him. The idea of not getting to him in time, never getting to speak to him again felt all too real and the fear of it made the blood pump faster through her system.

Her smart gun was heavy and slowed her down. Even still, she ran ahead of Apone and Crowe. She had started running as soon as she heard the message come through the radio, not even waiting for Apone's directive.

As she approached the front of the east tunnel, the space opened up into the large cavernous entrance where they had initially split off. Beyond that, the dark and starry sky appeared before her.

She veered the corner and began heading in the direction of the west tunnel, dropping her smartgun to the ground as she ran.

"Fuck this!" She knew she would be faster with just her handgun and she pulled it out of its holster and continued onward, Apone and Crowe still trailing behind her. As she moved forward, the sound of rapid gunfire could be heard, grenades detonating and shouts echoing. She ran faster.

Vasquez was about halfway down the west tunnel, when the sound of gunfire slowed and then dropped off completely. Not long after that, three quick gunshots echoed through the shaft.

Over the radio, Dietrich's voice sounded again, reverberating as she yelled, "We need backup! Ferro, we need emergency evac now!"

Then came Frost's voice, "Gunman is on the run towards the entrance of west tunnel!"

"Ferro, do you copy?! Gonna need two stretchers! Hurry, he's bleeding out," the tone of Dietrich's voice sent a chill down her spine.

Vasquez felt a new surge of fear envelop her as she considered Dietrich's words, unsure who she was talking about.

"Copy that, dustoff inbound," said Ferro.

In the distance, the infrared image of a person suddenly came into view, and Vasquez pointed her pistol. The figure was running towards her, trying to make an escape. She knew it was the gunman who had fired the shots, who had just shot a member of her crew and she stared at the approaching figure in anger. She had half a mind to fire, but she resisted.

"Stop right where you are or I _will _kill you!" Vasquez shouted through the darkness. Her voice wavered slightly as she caught her breath, but her gun remained steady.

The gunman put her hands up in surprise as Vasquez moved closer, pistol pointed until her adversary reluctantly lowered her weapon. When she had safely placed the gun on the ground, Vasquez kicked it away, just as Crowe ran up from behind them and brought the woman to the ground, securing her hands behind her back. Then Vasquez was running again.

"Gunman apprehended," Crowe said over the radio. "Apone and Spunkmeyer are coming up with stretchers."

"ETA on backup!" came Dietrich's breathless voice.

"I'm ten yards away, I see you guys!" Vasquez yelled into the radio and she continued to sprint forward.

By the time she got to them, her heart was pounding, her muscles shaking and she gasped for oxygen within her facemask.

In the dim light, only Dietrich and Karim had their shoulder lamps on and both lit up scenes of horror. Under Karim's light was Drake, looking dazed, his head back against the wall of the tunnel. Karim was holding pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding and Hicks was using his belt around Drake's thigh as a tourniquet. In the light, she could see blood running down the side of Hick's face from a head laceration.

Beneath Dietrich's hands, someone was lying face-down. The back half of his armour had been removed and blood soaked the back of his uniform, Dietrich and Frost both holding pressure to multiple gunshot wounds.

A part of Vasquez had already known it would be Hudson. Still, the sight of it was startling, and she momentarily stood in shock, her insides feeling as if they were collapsing.

Dietrich's voice shook her out of it. "Vasquez!"

Vasquez forced her legs to move and she rushed over to help.

"Take over for me, hold your hands here!" Dietrich directed her and Vasquez complied, holding a bloody cloth over two gunshot wounds. Frost had his hand firmly over a third, his pistol in the other hand, pointing ahead as he stayed vigilant; on the lookout for other threats.

Hudson's back rose and fell with laboured breaths and she could feel his rapid heartbeat under her palms. His face was turned to the side, still wearing his facemask. Frost had turned on his shoulder lamp now and in the beam of light, Hudson's features were momentarily visible. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyelashes blinking.

"He's awake," Vasquez stated in surprise.

"Hudson, you're gonna be okay, man. Just hang in there!" Frost's voice sounded strained. "Shit Dee, you gotta do something!"

"I'm working on it!" Dietrich shouted back as she frantically pulled out supplies from her limited field first aid kit: medical scissors, tape, a packaged bandage.

At that moment, Vasquez felt Hudson's back muscles tense beneath her hands and then suddenly they began to shudder and she knew he was struggling. He began to gasp and warm blood surged around her hands, flowing between her fingers.

"Dietrich!" Vasquez yelled and Dietrich moved in quickly and put her ear close to his back and listened as his frame trembled and he gave a groan of distress that was hard to hear.

"His lung is collapsing—get out of the way, both of you!" Dietrich sounded panicked, but her actions remained perfectly executed. As Vasquez and Frost took their hands away from the scene, Dietrich swiftly cut the shirt of Hudson's uniform with the medical scissors so that the fabric flayed open to reveal three dark gunshot wounds scattered across the upper half of his back.

Frost aimed his shoulder lamp to give Dietrich more light and they could actually see blood bubbling from one of the wounds, a gurgling noise as he struggled to breathe. Dietrich quickly unwrapped the bandage, but it was the plastic packaging she used first, taping it in place over the wound in an attempt to prevent it from sucking in air. Then she secured the bandage over the remaining two bullet wounds. "We're going to need to turn him over."

Keeping his neck stabilized, the three of them carefully coordinated the manoeuvre, moving him onto his back. Hudson no longer looked conscious as Dietrich pulled off his face mask and then her own, her lips connecting with his, breathing air into his lungs.

Vasquez stood up now, her heart racing, still attempting to regain the breath she hadn't yet been able to catch. Then she went to Drake's side, dismayed to see that his eyes were now closed. Suddenly nothing seemed real.

"Drake?" She patted the side of his face but he didn't respond. Beside her, Karim was silent, holding pressure on Drake's thigh.

There was a lot of blood and she couldn't bring herself to look up at Karim, fearing his usual pessimism, so she turned to Hicks instead. Despite blood sliding down the side of his face, Hicks held Drake's wrist in his hand. "His heart rate still feels strong, Vaz," he said reassuringly.

.

Vasquez held one side of Drake's stretcher, Karim on the other side and Frost carrying the front end. They moved through the tunnel at a run, sacrificing vigilance for speed, treading through the darkness where the threat of remaining combatants was ever present. She looked down at Drake, thinking about, but not daring to holster her weapon so she could hold his hand and tell him it would be okay.

The others ran in front with Hudson's stretcher and she feared that at any second she might overhear Dietrich saying that he didn't have a pulse.

But they made it to the dropship and they loaded the stretchers on, Dietrich immediately getting to work and yelling instructions to Frost, who boarded the ship alongside a dizzy-looking Hicks.

"First Squad, we're going to stay behind," said Apone abruptly. "We gotta focus now, we're the clean-up crew."

"But—" the words of protest slipped past her lips and she looked up at Apone. Surprisingly, he nodded in understanding.

"I know Vasquez," he said. "But things there are no longer in our hands. Right now, your squad needs you so we can finish the job and get outta this hellhole."

Vasquez felt helpless as she stood on the dusty ground alongside her diminished squad, watching as the engine of the dropship blared to life and then swiftly took flight, disappearing into the darkness and leaving her behind.

.

It was five hours later by the time they got back to the Sulaco.

Along with Apone, Crowe and Karim, Vasquez had spent that time combing the surrounding area, rounding up and appredinding their adversaries, tending to injuries and keeping them in line until Ferro and Spubkmeyer returned with the dropship. After an infrared scan of the area determined that they hadn't missed anyone, they took the entire group into custody, walking them into the hull of the dropship, leaving the Darkside behind and delivering them to colonial authorities.

She had managed to get through it, and luckily they hadn't encountered too many obstacles because her mind was effectively elsewhere, wondering and worrying. Now, as she finally walked into the medical bay of the Sulaco, Vasquez was filled with anxiety.

Immediately when she entered, she saw Hicks, a bandage around his head, sitting upright at the end of the bed, where he had likely been instructed to stay the night. He was speaking quietly with Frost who was slouched in an armchair. Her eyes scanned past them and she saw Drake, asleep in the bed next to Hicks, his leg bandaged and elevated.

Hicks and Frost stopped talking and looked up at her as she entered. She didn't speak at first, she just moved across the room to Drake's bed, her hand automatically going to his forehead, stroking his hair. She was hoping that he might wake at her touch, but he remained asleep, breathing deeply. She took his hand in hers.

He was still dressed in his uniform, only his armour had been removed, just the one pant leg cut off. An intravenous line delivered a blood transfusion, the needle uncovered, protruding from his arm.

Vasquez looked back at Frost and Hicks. "Any word on Hudson?"

"They're still in there with him," replied Frost and Vasquez followed his eyes to the door of the Sulaco's small operating room. She nodded in understanding.

Everyone was quiet for a while, each of them seemingly deep in thought until Hicks broke the silence.

"The guy improvised a cross passage through six feet of rock. I thought he was nuts," he mused.

Frost leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "The three of us would have been dead otherwise. No question."

Vasquez glanced again at the door to the operating room, willing it to open, to receive an update. But the door remained closed and she looked back down at Drake.

A long silence passed between them before Frost spoke again. "I should probably go. You should get some sleep man."

Hicks gave a shrug as if to say that he wasn't in need of sleep, but the hollowness of his eyes said otherwise.

Frost stood up and carried his chair over to where Vasquez was and set it down for her so she could sit by Drake's bed.

"Thanks, man," she said to him and he squeezed her shoulder in a gesture of support.

But even after Frost exited the room and Hicks closed his eyes to sleep, Vasquez didn't sit down. She felt like she needed to do something useful, so she took out her knife and methodically began to cut away the filthy shirt of Drake's uniform. Being careful not to disrupt the IV, she pulled the shredded shirt off of him, then she got a warm, wet towel from the sink and began wiping the dirt from his face and body.

She was running the towel over the side of his stomach when she heard him exhale a quick breath.

"I was hoping that was you," rumbled his deep voice.

Vasquez stopped what she was doing and his eyelids opened and he was looking back at her.

"Oh yeah?" she replied, attempting to hide some of the relief she knew was showing on her face.

"Mmm," Drake said lethargically. His eyes closed again. "Means you're not mad at me."

"I'm not mad."

His hand found hers as he drifted back to sleep and Vasquez sat down in the chair and she hunched forward.

When her hand brushed against something raised in her cargo pants, she was reminded of their friendship note, and she pulled it from her pocket.

She unfolded it, curious whether Drake had added anything before giving it to her on the dropship.

Her eyes fell upon the message immediately. It was written in small letters in the centre of the page, on what formerly existed as a blank space between the drawings of her and Drake.

_I love you._

Vasquez felt her stomach drop and she quickly folded the paper back up. Then she opened it again to make sure she hadn't imagined it. _I love you. _It was still there.

She crunched the paper in her hand and pressed her forehead to the bed.

When a noise startled her, she had no idea how long her eyes had been closed, whether she had fallen asleep or was just in a stress-induced trance.

"You guys round up the rest of them?" Dietrich's voice asked and Vasquez turned to see the field medic, drying her hands with a towel.

Vasquez nodded. "How is he?"

Dietrich moved to Drake's bedside, pulling out her stethoscope. She held it to Drake's chest and listened. "Breathing sounds good, his heart rate is back to normal."

"And Hudson?" asked Vasquez, a bit embarrassed as it became evident who she had initially been asking about.

Dietrich paused and looked back in the direction of the operating room, where Hudson and Bishop were now partially visible through the open door. "It was touch and go, but we think he's going to pull through." She extracted the IV from Drake's arm, pressing a cotton ball to where the needle had been and taping it securely in place. "What a night, huh?"

"Yeah," agreed Vasquez. "Hope the company is happy— we did their fucking dirtywork to save a few crates of rocks. They don't even give a shit what it could have cost us..."

Deitrich didn't answer, her face looking exhausted. "You should go get some sleep Vaz," she said after a moment and Vasquez could see the dark shadows under her eyes, the stress of the night visibly wearing on her.

"When do you get to sleep?" Vasquez asked sincerely and Dietrich gave her a commiserating smile.

"When I know for sure that we're all out of the woods... Now scram. I mean it, visiting hours are over."

Vasquez nodded and Dietrich turned to give her some space as she said goodbye to Drake. Vasquez squeezed his hand, feeling a bit sad about the idea of him waking up again without her there.

In every other case, she would have left the note for him, without question. But she felt uncertain now, thinking about the words that it contained. If Drake awoke to find it with no response, would he interpret it as her returning the sentiment or rejecting it?

And which of those things was she actually doing?

Hoping that he would simply take it as a gesture that she was thinking about him, she slipped the paper into Drake's partially closed hand and silently turned away from his bedside.

As she left, she couldn't keep her eyes from travelling to the adjoining room where Hudson was, taking in the limited view through the door: the bandaged back and the steady undulation of a ventilator.

Vasquez felt completely numb, walking out of the medical bay in a haze.

.

She had been heading towards her room, but found herself walking past the corridor that led to their living quarters, moving in the direction of the aircraft hangar. Her hand automatically went to her pocket to confirm the presence of her cigarette pack and lighter.

But just as she was about to enter the hangar, the double doors opened and Ferro and Spunkmeyer emerged from within, walking so quickly that the three of them nearly collided. Like her, they were still in uniform and she could tell they had just finished their shutdown procedure for the dropship.

"Oh, Vaz!" said Ferro, looking startled and a bit sombre. "Have you been to medical yet to see the guys? How are they doing?"

"They think Hudson's going to pull through… and Drake seems to be doing alright. He woke up and said a few things…" Vasquez trailed off and she knew her news wasn't coming across as overly reassuring.

"Is it too late for us to get in there to see them?" asked Spunkmeyer.

Vasquez nodded. "Dietrich kicked me out."

Ferro eyed the pack of smokes already in Vasquez's hand. "And so you're walking around the ship now in search of somewhere that you can smoke away your troubles?"

"Pretty much," replied Vasquez.

"Well then, you've come to the right place, girlfriend," said Ferro supportively, sliding her arm around Vasquez's shoulder.

Spunkmeyer nodded, "I'll leave you both to it," he said knowingly. "Just don't ash in the fuel drums." And he continued down the hall as Ferro led Vasquez into the hangar.

When the door shut behind them, Ferro turned to look at her in concern. "What's going on? I can tell something's up."

Vasquez shuffled her feet as they moved toward the shipping crate seating against the wall. "It's nothing," she said discontentedly and she pulled out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag before handing the pack and lighter to Ferro, knowing that in addition to lighting one up, her friend would also take a second one for later. Ferro tucked the spare into the rolled up cuff of her sleeve as they sat down on the crates.

"Seriously, what is it, Vaz? Do they actually think the guys are going to be okay?"

Vasquez nodded.

"Well, what then?"

"Ferro, he fucking told me _he loves me._"

"Drake told you that when he woke up?"

"No, he wrote it in a note he gave me on the dropship before all this. And I just opened it now and I have no idea what to tell him."

"You guys have been sleeping together for how many years now… and he says it in a note?" muttered Ferro. Vasquez stayed silent and Ferro pushed her arm playfully. "Guess Drake's not really a _grand gestures_ kinda guy, huh?"

"We were fighting all summer and then I broke it off… I guess I just didn't expect him to say it now… Honestly, I wish he hadn't. It just makes things so complicated. I don't know." She took a drag of smoke and exhaled it, her head buzzing from the nicotine.

"If he wasn't in a hospital bed right now, would things feel as complicated?"

"Probably not," Vasquez replied truthfully.

"Do you have feelings for someone else?"

Vasquez hesitated, conscious of the fact that she didn't say 'no' right away.

Ferro picked up on it immediately, her eyes widening. It was like they were playing a game of 'twenty questions' and Ferro only needed a total of two questions and half an answer to get to the bottom of Vasquez's sad and confusing love life.

Sure enough, there was something in Ferro's expression indicating that she suddenly knew the entire story, perhaps better than Vasquez did herself.

"Oh girl," Ferro laughed sympathetically. She took the cigarette out of Vasquez's mouth and stubbed it out. "We're gonna need something stronger."

.

Vasquez sat on one of the seats at the front of the dropship, directly behind the cockpit. With the engine off and the APC removed from the hull, every sound echoed through the aircraft. Ferro was standing on the seat next to her, opening up a panel in the ceiling. Out of the hiding place, she pulled out a thin metal box.

"Still got that lighter?" Ferro asked, jumping down and sitting in the seat next to her. Vasquez tossed her the lighter as Ferro selected a joint from the box and lit it, taking a hit and passing it to Vasquez.

Vasquez followed, pulling smoke into her mouth, drawing the rest of the breath in through her nose, the dense white cloud moving in a seamless trail from her slightly parted lips, up through her nose and into her lungs. She exhaled the smoke past her lips again and it moved through the hull, swirling and drifting upward.

She felt the calming effects hit her almost instantly. A serene, cerebral high creeping up to her brain. She passed it back to Ferro. "Thanks, chica."

Ferro grinned. "Got you covered, bitch! I knew this would help."

"Yeah," said Vasquez. She pulled up her legs and sat cross-legged, leaned her head against the back of the chair and Ferro patted her knee.

"Everything's going to work out… And they're both going to be fine. Dietrich and Bishop said so, right?... God, what a crazy day this has been."

Vasquez stayed silent, accepting the joint again from Ferro.

"You know," said Ferro thoughtfully, "Someone once told me... that you know you're in love when you find someone that you could be marooned with, just the two of you together, stranded on a satellite.

Vasquez considered the sentiment. "Fuck, Ferro, that's some romantic bullshit right there," she said. "Who the hell told you that?"

"A guy I once met on a refueling satellite," Ferro replied, and despite everything else that she was feeling, Vasquez laughed.

. . .

A gasp transcended her unconscious thoughts, the sudden need to draw air into her lungs pulling her abruptly back into the present. Her eyes shot open and she was instantly sitting upright, reaching for her gun.

But she had no gun, no pulse rifle slung over her shoulder or handgun in her chest holster, certainly no M56 smartgun that was commonly an extension of her body.

Vasquez looked around her and things felt eerily quiet. The engine of the dropship had been turned off, no doubt sitting on the landing pad in the hangar of the Sulaco.

She was still on the floor of the Cheyenne, Hudson lying beside her, and Hicks on the pull-down cot, just as before. Both of them were still out. Immediately, she checked Hudson's pulse and listened to his breathing and she was relieved to discover that everything still sounded alright. She shook his arm gently, hoping he would wake, but he didn't.

The air in the dropship felt different; colder and less humid, but there was something else in the air that she couldn't quite identify— the smell of something distant but putrid, like catching the scent of an animal's den. The hatch of the dropship was open and a cool draft travelled past her bare arms, chilling her and causing the hairs on her arms to stand upright. Her legs were damp and she looked at them, noticing that two wet towels had been draped over each, covering the burns.

It must have been Ripley's doing, but now Ripley, Newt and Bishop were nowhere to be found and something seemed _off._

Vasquez didn't feel mentally prepared to attempt standing yet, so she stayed in a seated position, inching herself forward toward the hatch. Using mostly her arms, she lowered herself down the stairs and tilted her head down so she could see out. But what she saw made her jaw drop.

The hangar was still dark, someone had yet to turn on the overhead lights. But even in the darkness, she could see that the place looked destroyed. It appeared as if a battle had occurred there, the steel grate floor cracked and sections of it pulled apart. Surrounding the dropship, on the concrete landing pad, were pools of white liquid—and that didn't bode well, given that it looked suspiciously like android blood.

Vasquez wanted to call out for Ripley and Bishop, but she remained silent and alert. She wondered about Newt, worried that the girl was on her own and in trouble.

She pulled herself up a couple steps so she could see back into the dropship, her eyes scanning the floor around the hatch until she located the pulse rifle she had been using earlier.

Vasquez reached for it and temporarily hung it over her shoulder as she grabbed the stair railing with both hands and pulled herself upright, all her weight resting on the left leg. She hunched over the railing, grinding her teeth to prevent herself from yelling in pain.

But she pushed forward, carefully moving down the stairs, aiming the rifle as she listened.

She thought she could hear voices. They didn't sound like they were in distress so she shifted her finger away from the trigger of the weapon.

"Vasquez!"

Ripley and Newt suddenly appeared, moving towards the dropship and could see that Ripley was limping, her face and arms scraped and bleeding.

"Jesus, Ripley!" Vasquez exclaimed, lowering the weapon. "What the hell happened?!"

"It must have latched onto the ship as we took off," said Ripley breathlessly.

"It got Bishop and tore him in two," Newt said sadly and her gaze dropped to Vasquez's legs. The wet towels had slid off, her tattered pants falling down around the burns like shredded curtains. Newt buried her face in Ripley's side.

"Where is it? Did you kill it?!" Vasquez pressed and Ripley nodded.

"I used the power loader. Dropped it down the airlock and into space."

"This is like a nightmare that never ends," said Vasquez sombrely. She looked over towards the airlock and could see the two halves of Bishop's body, covered in white liquid, the android's torso still moving.

Ripley nodded. "I'm looking forward to putting some distance between us and this goddamn rock. Come on, Newt, help me find a stretcher."

.

Ripley and Newt located a gurney from the medical bay as Vasquez lowered the ramp of the dropship and one by one, they transported Hicks, Hudson and Bishop.

It felt strange being in the medical bay without Dietrich or Bishop milling around, looking after everyone. Now, Dietrich was gone and Bishop was on one of the beds, torn in half, but still quietly talking Ripley through the procedure to power him off.

"You did good, Ripley," Vasquez overheard him saying to her softly. "You too, Newt."

"Thank you, Bishop," Ripley responded. "We wouldn't have made it without you… and I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot."

"I'm just glad we got there in the end. I truly hope one day we'll all meet again. Bishop gave a smile. "Now, time to flip that 'off' switch."

Ripley gave him a sad smile. "Okay, Bishop," she responded quietly.

"Goodbye Bishop," came Newt's sad voice, the sides of her small mouth turned down, and even from across the room, Vasquez could see she was on the verge of tears.

As Ripley began running through the somewhat complicated procedure of shutting down Bishop's systems, Vasquez looked on from the bed where she sat with her legs up, and Newt's sad eyes travelled over to her.

Feeling uncharacteristically protective of Newt, she motioned for the girl to come over to her. Surprisingly, Newt left Ripley's side and went over to Vasquez's bed and stared up at her, her eyes brimming with watery tears that had not yet fallen.

It reminded her of when she and Carmen shared a room back in Juárez when they were kids, when Carmen would get scared at night and stand next to Vasquez's bed until she would cave and let her sister crawl in bed with her. Vasquez would hug Carmen and tell her everything was alright and they would talk under the covers in whispered voices.

Vasquez reached over the side of the bed and pulled Newt up so that they were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. Together, they watched from afar as Bishop became lifeless.

"I know it's hard to see him like that, but when we get back to Gateway Station, they're going to repair him and make him as good as new," she told Newt.

"Is everyone going to get better?" asked Newt and she was looking at the other two beds in front of them: Hicks with his badly burned face and torso and Hudson on the bed beside them with his stomach and thigh in bandages.

"I hope so," said Vasquez sincerely, "I think we're overdue for some good luck."

Across the room, Ripley zipped up Bishop's body in a translucent vinyl body bag and stood up, turning to Hicks, her hand tenderly running over his arm.

It was clear to Vasquez that Ripley and Hicks had formed a connection while on LV-426. It had gradually become apparent in the looks they exchanged; their conversations away from the rest of the group; Hicks jumping through a plate glass window to save Ripley from a facehugger.

And now it could be seen in the way she worried about him.

Newt sniffled and made a move to get off the bed to go to Ripley, when Vasquez leaned towards her and said gently, "let's just give Ripley a minute, okay chiquita?"

The young girl nodded, still sniffing and Vasquez sat still beside her, not knowing quite what to say or do, until a familiar phrase crossed her mind.

"Desgracia compartida, menos sentida," Vasquez said and Newt looked up at her curiously. "_Shared misfortune, less sorrow_—it's something my father used to say to me when I was feeling alone."

Newt rubbed her eyes.

"We're in this together. You know, you can talk to us, to Ripley and I… and Hicks and Hudson once they wake up. We're all here for you, niña."

Newt nodded and Vasquez was momentarily caught off guard when the girl leaned in and hugged her, the thin arms clasping around her, Newt's tear-stained face pressing into her side.

As Vasquez lowered her arms, closing them around the girl in an embrace, she thought of Carmen and the feeling of family.

In that room was all that remained of their team; the small group of survivors. They needed to stick together.

.

Despite still seeming a bit shaky on her own two feet, Ripley had taken on the role of the crew's new caregiver. She covered Hicks' face and chest with burn cream and a patchwork of bandages, checked Hudson's vital signs, and despite Vasquez's protests, treated and wrapped her burned legs.

And even after she had taken care of all three marines, she seemed hesitant to leave.

"It's fine, Ripley," said Vasquez encouragingly. "You need to take care of yourself. I can keep an eye on things here."

Newt had fallen asleep on the bed beside Vasquez and Ripley looked at the girl and nodded. "Okay. We'll all rest for a bit… that means you too, Vasquez. You got that, marine?"

Vasquez smiled and nodded and Ripley woke Newt and lifted her off the bed, guiding her by the hand to the sleeping quarters.

It was surprisingly hard to sleep and Vasquez laid on the gurney, her eyes travelling around the room, the familiar space triggering various memories in her mind. When her eyes fell on bed beside her, she allowed her gaze to linger there.

. . .

"Okay, easy… careful...that's it," said Dietrich.

"Don't look at my ass," said Drake sullenly, clearly not too thrilled about his out-patient attire or the fact he needed the help of both Vasquez and Dietrich to get him into the wheelchair beside his bed.

"It's not like both of us haven't seen it at this point, Drake," Dietrich replied, and added, "Sorry, Vaz, getting him into the hospital gown was a whole thing."

Vasquez laughed at the mental image, and shook her head at Drake. "I know this might sound weird coming from me, but you could stand to cheer up a bit—you could have been dead right now, you know."

"So could Hudson… all because he had to rescue my sorry ass," said Drake morosely. He looked over at Hudson's bed beside them where he lay on his side, propped up with pillows, fast asleep.

"Hudson's going to be okay," Dietrich reassured him. "His charts are looking good and he was awake and talking earlier this morning."

"See?" said Vasquez to Drake brightly.

Dietrich handed Drake a clear bag with several different drugs in it. "Okay, take these twice a day with food, these and these only as needed. Oh, and these"—she said, picking up the pair of crutches that had been resting against the wall— "As soon you feel up for it."

Drake unenthusiastically accepted the crutches, holding them awkwardly.

"Thanks Dietrich. You're the fucking bomb," Vasquez said sincerely and clapped the palm of Dietrich's hand and Deitrich smiled, perhaps knowing that it was one of the highest forms of praise that Vasquez was capable of giving.

As Vasquez wheeled Drake down the hall towards his room, neither of them said much until finally Drake spoke.

"Did you open it?"

"Yeah," replied Vasquez, knowing that he was talking about their note.

Silence followed again as she continued pushing his wheelchair down the hall, staring at the back of his head, wondering what expression he wore on his face.

When they reached Drake's room, she brought him inside and awkwardly helped him onto the bed and he held his leg and grimaced.

Vasquez moved around the room, locating a T-shirt and boxers for him to wear instead of the hospital gown and when she brought the articles of clothing to him he tossed them aside and took her hands instead.

"Look, I get that it's probably not something you wanted to hear, but I can't be afraid to say what's on my mind anymore," said Drake.

Vasquez sat on the bed with him and he continued talking.

"It's like you said, I could have been dead right now and I never would have had the chance to say it out loud." Drake took a deep breath and stared up at her, his eyes shining with sincerity. "I love you."

"Drake."

"Just let me say what I need to. You were right about the way I was acting. I always thought I was the one calling the shots in my life, but one day I woke up and realized that I wasn't in control... because what I really wanted in my life was _you _and I had no control over anything you did or how you felt about me. I was trying to keep you close… but in the end all I was really doing was pushing you farther away."

Vasquez was listening to every word he was saying, but she didn't know how to respond, she couldn't meet his gaze.

"I haven't been fair to you and I'm sorry," Drake continued. "I'm going to try to do better, Vaz."

Finally Vasquez felt her eyes shift upward to meet his. "I'm sorry too."

They drifted into a hug and it felt good to be holding each other again. It also felt easier to talk to him when she wasn't looking at his face so she didn't pull away and spoke into his shoulder. "I love you too, Drake, I do, but… it just feels like a different kind of love."

They parted and she looked down, ashamed of her own feelings. "I'm sorry, I wish I could explain it."

"I get it," he said and Vasquez looked up at him and he nodded. "I mean... I see the way you are around Hudson. It's like Pete-fucking-Finn all over again," he laughed despite the hurt visible in his eyes.

She felt a jolt of discomfort at his words, but she brushed it off with a laugh. "Those must be some pretty strong painkillers, Drake. You know how crazy you sound, right?"

"It's not crazy, but it's also not an accusation. I know you well enough to know these things and I see it in the way you look at him… because it's the same way you used to look at me."

Vasquez was shaking her head, but he continued.

"Look, it doesn't matter. What we're talking about now is you and me. And as much as I would kill to go back to those brief moments when you and I were good together, I know now that I can't make you want the same things I do. I have to let you find what you want on your own."

She remained silent, staring at Drake's bed sheets.

"But life is short Vaz, and it's even shorter for a marine. So until you know what it is that you want, you could always, you know, _stick with me._" He smiled. "Then one day, whenever the time calls for it, we either part ways or we go back to the beginning… and give ourselves a fresh start."

Vasquez considered Drake's words carefully. "I hear what you're saying. I just need some time to think about it," she replied honestly. "For now, do you think we can just go back to being friends?"

Drake nodded. "I think we could do that. But uh, would it be weird if I still asked for your help changing out of this thing?"

.

It was almost evening by the time Vasquez walked back into the medical bay of the Sulaco. She waited around the entrance and from the doorway she could see the foot of his bed, the shape of his feet under the covers and she watched for movement, not wanting to walk in and wake him if he was sleeping.

Bishop appeared suddenly, as if sensing her presence from the other room and greeted her.

"Just coming by for a visit," said Vasquez. "Is he awake?"

"Last I checked. He's been in and out of sleep," replied Bishop pleasantly, glancing back in the direction of the infirmary. "I'm sure he'd be happy to see you." And he gestured for her to go through.

Hudson was lying on his side, his back towards her, propped in place with pillows. When she walked around to the side he was facing, he looked up at her drowsily.

"Hey Vaz," he said smiling at her, his eyes looking heavy. "Drake's not here anymore, they let him leave already."

"I know," Vasquez replied with a laugh, "I'm here to see you, dumbass."

"Oh," said Hudson.

"How you doin'?" Vasquez asked as she sat in the chair next to his bed. "You're looking... better." Truthfully, he looked tired and pale and not all that healthy, but seeing his smile when she walked in was encouraging.

"Feeling a bit like Swiss cheese but I'm just glad everyone made it out," Hudson said, one side of his face against the pillow. "How's Drake?"

"Yeah, he's doing alright," she answered, "He's already frustrated with the crutches, but he'll be okay."

"So you two talking again?" asked Hudson curiously.

Normally Vasquez wouldn't have wanted to engage in conversation about her relationship with Drake, however, seeing Hudson's sincere expression looking at her questioningly, for some reason, she decided to say what was on her mind.

"Yeah," she admitted. "You know how sometimes you feel a certain way until something else happens and then it makes you rethink things?"

Hudson nodded and the side of his face brushed against his pillow but she wondered if he knew what she was talking about.

"Basically, we realized we were both being idiots," she said with a bitter laugh. "So, yeah, we're talking again."

Vasquez took a second to collect her thoughts, pushing herself to share what she wanted to say.

"I don't know if you knew this, but during the mission, we only lost radio communications with you guys in the centre tunnel, the rest of us could still hear each other. So, I knew that Drake got hit, but we were so far away at that point that I couldn't do anything about it." She paused and realized she was looking at her hands as she spoke, and forced herself to look at Hudson. "I'm really grateful that you, you know, got him out of there."

Hudson's blue eyes watched her, his brows furrowed slightly. "Yeah, well, it was nothing," he said modestly.

A slightly uncomfortable silence followed until Hudson spoke. "Hey, wanna see something cool?"

Hudson's arm moved slowly to the table by his bedside as he tried to reach for something. Vasquez helped him, picking up the thing he was reaching for so he wouldn't strain his back.

"Take a look," said Hudson when the box was in her hand. "Bishop saved them for me to keep as a souvenir. That guy knows me so well."

Vasquez opened the box and a couple bullets rolled around inside. "There's only two here," she said.

"Yeah, they're leaving the third in there," said Hudson with a half smile, a thumb languidly pointing towards his back. "So really I get to keep all three."

Vasquez couldn't help but laugh at the earnest expression he wore. "Why would you even want a reminder from something like this?" she asked.

"I dunno, because it's badass. My first gunshot wounds, man." He laughed sheepishly. "Gonna frame them or something. You ever had one?"

"Yeah," she replied and without thinking, she lifted her shirt a bit so he could see the scar she had below her ribcage. "My fifteenth birthday. Took out half a kidney."

A bit of colour came to Hudson's pale face as his gaze travelled up from her bare stomach and she lowered her shirt back down. "Brutal," he said, "You've had some bad birthdays, huh?" He looked sympathetic and Vasquez felt a bit embarrassed that she had shared too much.

"Half a kidney—if I'd known, I woulda suggested we go easier on the tequila last week," he added.

"I got one and a half left. You get two kidneys, man."

"Yeah, I know," said Hudson indignantly.

"Anyway, even if I had the choice, don't think I would have wanted to keep the bullet from mine," she said, still holding the box. "But, I'm glad that you do."

He seemed tired now, his eyelids were drooping and it looked like he was having trouble staying awake.

She carefully closed the lid and set the box back on Hudson's bedside table. "I better get going."

He nodded. "Thanks for the visit."

"Feel better," she said, standing up, then she paused. "Hudson?"

"Yeah, Vaz?"

"I'm glad you're not dead."

A grin came to his sleepy face. He held up a weak fist and she bumped it with hers.

.

Apone had given them some time off for the week that followed, arranging only short missions and alternating small groups so that they could all have some down time. And whether it was an attempt to rebuild morale, or reward them for a hard mission that was considered to be a success by the Company, word soon began to spread that a celebration was being planned for the end of the week.

Because Hudson and Drake were still recovering and not yet cleared for a drop, it was decided that the event would be held aboard the Sulaco, in a part of the ship that they rarely got to see: a boardroom that was only ever used for high-level Company meetings. In essence it was a penthouse, located toward the top of the ship, with glass tube chandeliers and windows on three sides that looked out onto the vastness of space.

As they began filing into the room, everyone seemed to be caught for words, struck by the expansive vistas; the surprise of seeing in panorama what they normally only glimpsed through the limited, utilitarian windows of the lower decks.

"Holy shit, think I found my new living quarters," commented Karim.

"The Company usually keeps this place for their use only," Frost told him. "They're worried us uncivilized grunts are gonna get drunk and trash it."

"They're not wrong," commented Ferro.

"Anyone touches that chandelier and I'll kick your ass to Alpha Centauri," warned Sergeant Apone. "Now, enjoy some free booze, courtesy of the ritzy folks at the top!"

Despite the negative feeling towards the Company, a few hoots and cheers echoed amongst the group and they began taking bottles of beer from a large, makeshift ice bucket that sat atop the expensive boardroom table.

"They shelled out for some expensive champagne, but we thought we'd stretch the funds a bit farther," explained Hicks. A bruise was still visible on his forehead, descending from his hairline.

"Can't argue with quantity over quality," quipped Crowe.

Vasquez popped the caps off of two beers and gave one to Drake once he was seated in one of the plush conference chairs. He leaned his crutches up against the immense windows and Vasquez stared out of the thick but perfectly transparent glass, the beauty of space so dazzling that she felt a smile come to her face, "Pretty amazing view."

"It sure is," said Drake, but instead of looking out, he was gazing up at her.

A few friendly cheers rippled through the group as Hudson walked into the room slowly, accompanied by Dietrich. Hudson grinned, his still-pallid complexion looking instantly enlivened by the warm reception.

Dietrich stayed by his side like a linebacker, helping him navigate through the others to find a place to sit. When Karim greeted Hudson with a pat on the back, Dietrich looked as though she was going to throw a punch.

Hudson and Dietrich made their way to the chairs by the window, not far from her and Drake. As soon as they were settled, Apone began speaking.

"Now that we're all here, I'd like to say a few things," Apone began. "I want to acknowledge that this has not been the easiest mission. Last week, we faced a difficult task...but we achieved the directive. We limited casualties to the other side, we fought hard and we paid the price for our success with injuries… but not with our lives." he looked over in the direction of where Hudson and Dietrich were sitting. "Hudson. You are a crazy son of a bitch, blowing up holes in tunnel walls to reach your team members. God knows how you pulled it off... but you managed to get your crew out and turned the tides of a shootout that could have ended a lot differently."

The crew cheered and Hudson shifted in his chair, looking pleased, but bashful.

"Dietrich," Apone continued. "If you're an expert at anything, it's bossing the shit out of everyone. And never has that come in more handy than this mission when you saved two lives in the field. You're a world-class medic and we're lucky to have you on our team."

When the crew applauded Dietrich, Hudson stood up with effort, clapping stiffly in appreciation of her before she told him to sit down.

"Always a boss," commented Apone. "Ferro and Spunkmeyer—here's to taking down an enemy drone and managing to not blow up the dropship!"

The cheers became more lively as Ferro bowed and Spunkmeyer curtsied.

Apone went on. "Vasquez! You absolutely suck at recon!" The crowd laughed at and Vasquez shook her head with an embarrassed smile. "But," Apone added, "you are always the first to run towards gunfire. Honestly, when we heard the call for backup when Drake was hit, I've never seen anyone run so fast in all my life."

As the others made noise in support, Drake smiled at Vasquez and reached out and touched her arm. It occurred to her that he didn't know just how worried about him she had been.

"And to the rest of you," Apone concluded, "you work hard and you work together. This has got to be one of the best crews I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of and I am proud to lead this team. Now, get drunk and have fun and goddammit if any of you breaks anything in here, you better believe I will take back every nice thing I just said!"

"Sarge!" came a jumbled communal response as bottles were raised to Apone.

As conversation resumed amongst the crew around them, Drake silently watched Vasquez as she sipped her beer.

"What?" Vasquez asked him and he smiled.

"You were worried about me… running to my rescue," he said teasingly, lightly slapping either side of her arms.

It was the lighthearted Drake she remembered from juvie and their early days on the Argo.

He grinned as she pushed his hands away playfully. When his hands came back up, she slapped him in the face, but harder than she intended. Her hand quickly returned to his cheek. "Shit, sorry," she said laughing apologetically, as his grin widened.

Still seated in his conference chair, Hudson rolled backward past them. "Don't mind me," he said jokingly, perhaps sensing he was interrupting a moment between them. "Thought I'd sneak over to the refreshments while Dietrich is talking."

"She's keeping a pretty watchful eye on you, man," observed Drake.

"Yeah, she's just being cautious," said Hudson and he glanced back in Dietrich's direction brightly. "But really, what harm is one beer? Or five?" He laughed.

There was a noticeable warmness in Hudson's expression as he looked back at Dietrich, where she stood by the window with Hicks and Spunkmeyer, her concerned eyes repeatedly leaving their conversation and going to Hudson. For a second, it was Vasquez who felt like she was the one interrupting a moment.

"Here," said Vasquez, giving Hudson her own bottle of beer. "If she asks, I forced you into it."

Hudson laughed, but thanked her and took a swig from the bottle, not caring that she had already drank from it.

"I've been meaning to say thanks, man," Drake said to Hudson, looking uncomfortable but genuine as he struggled to find his words. "You really risked your ass to save mine, so… yeah… just thanks."

"Come on, man, you're makin' me blush," said Hudson with a side grin. "But, yeah of course. I frickin' love you man, I'd do it all over again." He rolled his chair in closer so he could slap Drake's hand.

As their hands connected, Drake pulled him closer, "Right back at ya, buddy," and the casual exchange morphed into a loose embrace of sorts.

They quickly released, both looking a bit awkward, and Hudson pushed his chair back as Drake cleared his throat.

"Well I feel like a third wheel," said Vasquez.

"Yeah, think I'll go make my rounds," said Hudson, taking the cue to make his exit. "Wanna give me a push over there towards Frost?"

Vasquez gave Hudson's conference chair a hard push in the direction he wanted to go and Drake laughed heartily at the commotion it caused.

She was glad to see Drake looking happier. It seemed as though a weight had been lifted off of him. She felt it too, a lightness, like things between them had been recalibrated.

"Alright, I admit it," she said to him and looked back at her with pleasant curiosity. "I was worried about you." Vasquez stated, feeling a bit self-conscious. "Of course I was."

Drake smiled, looking like he wanted to kiss her. While it was something they never would have dared to do in front of Apone, Vasquez couldn't deny that it was something she wanted at that moment.

Although it wasn't 'I love you', Vasquez said the second thing she knew Drake would want to hear most.

"I think that we should stick together. At least, for now."

Life was short, and even shorter for a marine.

How often did they go to work, only to stare death in the face, not knowing whether they would make it out alive?

Had things played even slightly differently with the mission, that evening's event might have been a funeral opposed to a celebration, Apone's speech a eulogy instead of a congratulatory roast.

Although their dynamic was complicated and even dysfunctional at times, Drake cared about her and she cared about him, and today they were both alive.

One day they might not be so lucky.


	10. Life and Death

He was being dragged through the darkness. The air that entered his lungs was stale; tasted of mold and blood and rot and he felt like he might be sick. The beast scuttled and hissed, pulling him in tow. When the claw around his leg constricted, so too did his surroundings. The walls around him began to close in, growing tighter until they were crushing him, cutting off his oxygen supply. He gasped for air.

Hudson woke with a start and was suddenly hit by a sharpness in his chest. He quickly found that he couldn't draw in a full breath, a stabbing pain in his ribs, his lungs feeling like they were about to collapse. He clutched his stomach and groaned in misery.

"Hudson?" came a voice and he opened his eyes just enough to see Vasquez getting up from the bed next to him. She was dressed in a tank top and briefs, but her legs were both completely bandaged from knee to ankle.

She moved gingerly from the bed to his side, her hands quickly on his shoulders, attempting to calm him.

"Breathe slow," she said as he gasped for air. He knew he was panicking; that part of the problem was in his mind. He shut his eyes and tried to control his breathing.

He heard Vasquez rummaging through a medical supply cart beside his bed and then her warm hands were on his chest.

"Hold still, would ya?" she chided gently as she began to put light pressure on different parts of his stomach. When she touched the right side of his rib cage and it hurt like hell, he inhaled sharply.

Vasquez wasted no time, stabbing an anesthetic shot into his side where the pain was. Hudson grunted at the immediate burning sensation, but slowly he became aware of a warm, numbing feeling as the anesthetic began to take effect.

The intense pain slowly diminishing, Hudson felt like he had more capacity to take air into his lungs and he inhaled and exhaled shakily.

"Nice and slow," Vasquez coaxed him in a hushed voice. She rubbed his arm as he struggled to catch his breath, slowly drawing in air, his chest shuddering as his lungs expanded within the limits of his rib cage. "Think you have some broken ribs," she said regretfully and he was surprised to see that there was concern in her expression.

As he received more oxygen, he became aware that his armour had been completely removed and the thick fabric of his combat utility pants had been ripped open at the thigh and someone had dressed the injury above his knee. His shirt was wide open, an adhesive bandage covering most of his stomach. He touched it in confusion.

"You a doctor now?" Hudson breathed hoarsely.

"Doctors are hard to come by at the moment," she said solemnly.

"What happened?" he murmured.

"You put yourself in the path of a fucking giant alien, that's what happened," she replied, a flash of annoyance crossing her face as she let go of his arm. "You know, Ripley insisted on holding off cryo until we knew you weren't going to die in your sleep. I said we should just go ahead."

"Sorry for the inconvenience," he offered feebly. He glanced around the room, looking for the others and his eyes went to the bed on the other side of him where Hicks lay sleeping, a surprising amount of his chest and face covered in bandages.

"His burns are bad so he's pretty heavily sedated," said Vasquez, reading his expression.

"And everyone else? Is Newt okay?" Hudson asked anxiously.

"Newt's fine, Ripley just went to put her to bed."

"Gorman?" he asked, but he already knew the answer. He sighed as Vasquez shook her head dismally.

Vasquez looked exhausted and mixed with the emotional hurt in her expression was physical pain, likely from whatever injuries lay beneath the bandages on her legs.

With effort, Hudson shifted in the bed to make room for her to sit, to take the weight off her legs. She gave him a nod of thanks and winced as she sat.

On the other side of Hicks, a body bag rested ominously on the bed and Hudson looked back at Vasquez questioningly, "Is that—?"

"It's Bishop," she said, shifting beside him on the edge of his bed. "We missed the final showdown. I was out for the count, but when I woke up, Ripley was all battered and Bishop was literally torn in half."

"What?" Hudson stared at her.

"Apparently that giant fucker latched itself to the Cheyenne as we were leaving and made it into the hangar. So Ripley goes and gets in the power loader and shows the bitch who's boss. Dropped its ass down the airlock and out into space."

Hudson continued to stare at her in surprise, trying to comprehend her story. "Are you shitting me? The power loader? That's badass… Ripley, man. That fucking sucks about Bishop. Think they'll be able to repair him at Gateway?"

"Man, I hope so."

Warmth was now spreading out from Hudson's chest and it took him a moment to realize that it was the morphine beginning to grow in effect as it worked its way through his bloodstream, a sudden rush of good feelings diffusing across his nervous system.

Hudson exhaled a long breath and shut his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Vasquez asked him, sounding startled.

He sighed again. "God Vaz, what did you give me?"

"I don't actually know, I thought it was a local," Vasquez replied, seeming slightly unnerved. "Is it helping?"

"Yeah. A bit too much," he said, the feeling of euphoria and relaxation growing, the pleasant feelings spreading through his body. "You gotta try this."

With an arm that felt heavy as lead, he gestured in the direction of the medical cart, indicating that she should take one too.

She shifted on the bed and grimaced in discomfort and it looked like her legs were bothering her. With a shrug that said, 'why the fuck not?' she reached over to the medical cart and selected the same kind of shot she had given to him, unwrapped it and injected it into her thigh.

"What happened to you?" he asked her quietly.

"A bunch of them chased us through the ducts and one jumped me. I fought it off, but… the acid. You know."

"Shit." He did know first hand how much the acid burns hurt and judging by how much of her legs were wrapped, he suspected she must have gotten a heavy dose of it. "That must hurt like a bitch."

Vasquez gave a little laugh and he knew it was because he was stating the obvious. "Yeah," she confirmed and she paused for a moment before she continued. "Gorman came back for me, and then we were surrounded. He helped me escape through an adjoining duct… I could hear him struggling as they attacked him. I think he waited 'till I was out of range to blow the grenade.

"Fuck, man," Hudson said shaking his head, visualizing the unpleasant scene as Vasquez described. She looked remorseful and he could tell that Gorman's death weighed on her.

Hudson shifted his position, managing to make more space for her to move in beside him. "Here, lay back, put your legs up."

She hesitated momentarily but moved in next to him. She gritted her teeth as she pulled her legs onto the bed. Vasquez was tough and she didn't like to show any signs of weakness, so he knew she was hurting badly.

He was conscious of how dirty he was, having been dragged through several miles of subfloor ducts, alien filth and his own blood and sweat. But as she settled in beside him, she didn't seem to care. Probably because her skin was also smudged with dirt, black soot smeared over her bare arms and neck and flecked across her face like freckles.

Their skin touched and he could feel the warmth from her body. The faint scent of her perspiration was strangely comforting to him.

Hudson leaned his head back, his body swimming in good feelings. She laid back too, sharing his pillow, her body close to his. They both stared up at the ceiling.

"How on earth did you escape, man?" she asked in amazement.

"Luck," he replied. He felt a shiver of discomfort as he recalled the events he had endured. He took a second to allow the morphine to settle his nerves again before he continued. "It dragged me all the way back to the place where we first fought 'em. When I finally managed to get out of its hold, just lying there was_ Apone's gun_—the only rifle that would have had a mag still in it—fully loaded and almost at my feet… It was just sheer, dumb luck."

He wanted to tell her about finding Dietrich there, about having to end her life in order to spare her, but it felt too heavy to even put into words.

Vasquez voiced a small hum of comprehension. Then she let out a deep sigh, her head falling to the side and touching against his.

"Is it working?" he asked.

"Yeah," she breathed. He turned his head toward her and their faces were close. She looked relaxed, her eyelashes fluttering a bit before closing. He was glad that she was feeling good.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They just laid side by side, shamelessly drugged, immersed in temporary relief. For a fleeting moment, the trauma of the past twenty-four hours lifted from Hudson's mind.

Lying next to Vasquez felt nice. Her body shifted closer to him, her skin now radiating an incredible amount of heat.

Hudson studied her face while her eyes were closed, noticing the soft skin on her strong jaw, the shape of her full lips, the delicate outline of her teardrop tattoo that seemed far too perfect for something that came out of prison.

Her eyes were still closed as her uncertain voice broke the silence, "What happened to her? Your girlfriend Louise?"

He was surprised to hear the question so out of nowhere and he assumed that she had overheard his conversation with Newt when they were held up in the Hadley's Hope operations building hours earlier.

Hudson took in a breath. "She died," he admitted to her. "She had a heart condition that no one knew about. It was sudden… it all happened during the time we were in cryo."

In the two years since Louise's death, he had only ever told Dietrich and Frost about what had really happened. He had never been sure whether the information made it around to other members of the crew, but as Vasquez's brown eyes watched him now, it was clear that she had never known.

"That was a bad year for you," she stated.

He remembered back to the misery of that mission— his ever-changing moods brought on by grief and insomnia, the depression and the thoughts of taking his own life. Then getting shot, growing closer with Dietrich and the subsequent guilt of being with her just because it felt better than being alone.

"It wasn't the best," Hudson agreed darkly and he turned to look at her more seriously. "I know… that you must be hurting from losing Drake."

Vasquez looked away, silent.

"And I can't pretend I know exactly what you're feeling… just that it fucking hurts," said Hudson. "When I lost Louise, it was the most... the hardest thing I ever…" he shook his head. "It almost killed me. But I made it through the worst of it. And it never really goes away but one day you just wake up and it ain't the very first thought in your mind. You realize that you're still alive and no matter how much it hurts, they wouldn't have wanted you to spend the rest of your life feeling like that. But it takes a while to get there, ya know?"

Vasquez didn't respond, but he knew she was thinking about his words.

"If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here for you, okay?"

She nodded and her eyes finally met his own, her eyebrows forming an expression of sadness and he felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to comfort her.

Vasquez inhaled and exhaled heavily and he assumed another wave of morphine had hit her.

"I should go back to my own bed," Vasquez slurred in exhaustion.

"It's fine," Hudson said softly. "Just close your eyes, sleep if you can."

She exhaled again and within seconds it seemed she was asleep.

He, too, was exhausted, but he couldn't take his eyes off her.

Hudson felt a sudden palpitation in his chest, like a quick jump start of his heart; a stalled motor kicking on. A small shiver crept down his spine and settled deep into the pit of his stomach and he knew it was the closeness of their bodies that was making him feel that way.

He had felt it before.

During their time working reconnaissance on the Darkside of Gliese two years back, sleeping next to one another during their off shift. Side by side in their sleeping bags, her back to him but inching toward him ever so slightly. It was the thrill of being so close to her; just on the edge of what could be considered appropriate. It was the feeling that she was awake and making a conscious choice to be near him, something he would feel so certain of in the moment, but would second guess the morning that followed, dismissing it as just his imagination.

Then, roughly six months after that, he felt it again. Back on Earth between deployments, when he and Vasquez met up in Houston, just the two of them, drunk and happy and free. He remembered the end of the night, being drawn together by an invisible magnetism, the sensation of her chest heaving against his, both equally breathless… He pushed the thought from his mind.

Now, as he watched Vasquez sleep, he was surprised to see a tear slide down her cheek.

"Vaz?" he asked quietly, but she was fast asleep and didn't respond.

He was tempted to brush the tear off, briefly touch his lips to the side of her cheek where it had been, feeling her soft skin. But he resisted. Instead, he laid his head back on the pillow next to hers.

. . .

"I'm so ready to go back," said Hudson, pretending to aim a nonexistent pulse rifle.

"I'm glad you're feeling ready, but—" said Dietrich, sounding unconvinced. "Hudson, seriously, you're going to—"

Hudson was halfway through the motion of shooting off an imaginary round, when his back twinged mid-movement and he grunted.

"—hurt yourself," she finished.

"I'd settle for light duty," said Hudson in a strained voice. He sat on his bed, shirtless, flexing his back.

Dietrich sat behind him on the bed and sighed as she began massaging his bare shoulders, lightly kneading his back muscles around the bandages. "It's barely been a week. You need to relax and give yourself a chance to heal."

"I am, but I'm so bored sitting alone in my room. Please, just give me the go-ahead to do _something_." Hudson turned to face Dietrich and he stared into her brown eyes. "Come on, Dee."

Things between them were new. Three days earlier, when she came by to change the dressings on his wounds, they had shared a kiss in his room. Since then, they had been spending more time alone together.

He liked just being around Dietrich, just talking with her and being in her company. She wasn't afraid to ask him about Louise, which he liked. He could tell Dietrich stories about her and she wouldn't get uncomfortable, she would just listen to him and acknowledge his feelings, somehow always knowing the right things to say.

Last night, she slept in his bed. And while she was still prohibiting them from more strenuous activities until he had fully healed, it just felt nice to have someone lying next to him, caring for him.

He still found it strange that she could like him so much, but he tried not to question it; he wanted to give it a chance, see where it would lead.

Now, as he gave her his best pleading look, she gazed back at him affectionately and he knew she was about to cave.

"Okay, okay," she said. "But light duty, only."

"You're the best!"

"And no drops either, you're staying on board. I'll talk to Apone and maybe he can set up some surveillance work or something for tomorrow." But then her hand went to her forehead. "Oh shit, they're organizing celebratory drinks for the team tomorrow night—that will be way too much for one day."

Hudson laughed. "It'll be fine! Pretty sure I can manage a few hours of surveillance and _a party_. Please Dee? Give me the all clear."

She hesitated. "Alright. I guess a half-shift should be okay."

Hudson smiled and kissed her on the cheek enthusiastically and Dietrich's face flushed with colour.

She smiled back at him and inched forward with her head tilted to the side. He moved in the rest of the way and touched his lips to hers and she tasted of minty, freshly brushed teeth. It felt easy kissing her; comfortable. Oddly, he never felt nervous or insecure around her, and for now, he was happy to tell himself that was a good thing.

Dietrich reluctantly pulled away from him. "I really need to get going," she said regretfully. She placed her hands gently on either side of his face and kissed him. When she finally peeled herself away from him and stood up, she was a bit breathless.

He got up from the bed, ignoring his stiff, aching muscles and followed her, caught her around the waist playfully before she could get to the door and she gave a little squeal, laughing as he held her.

"Careful, your back!" she scolded him, but she was still laughing. "Hudson!"

Hudson grinned and let her go, and Dietrich smoothed down her shirt, making sure it was buttoned before she opened the door, a genuine smile still gracing her features.

But her exit was poorly timed. The moment the door opened, Vasquez was walking past in the hallway. She seemed surprised as she looked up, her eyes going to Dietrich and then a shirtless Hudson, both frozen in his doorway.

Hudson felt his face grow hot, but Dietrich held her cool a bit better.

"Morning, Vaz," said Dietrich and then she quickly turned back to Hudson. "So just continue with those physio exercises I showed you, and I'll be back to check on you again this afternoon."

"Right, I will," said Hudson a bit too obediently, rolling his shoulder back in illustration. But by that time, Vasquez had already passed, continuing down the hall, without saying a word.

.

The next day, Hudson walked into the cramped equipment room of the Sulaco and set up his laptop on a small table. He didn't care that he was sequestered in a crowded, temporary work space—he was glad to be out of his room and back contributing to the mission.

Although they had successfully eradicated the main hub used for distribution of the stolen resources on Gliese 667 Cc, there was still work to be done, namely shutting down the illegal supply chains that were still operating within the urban centres.

The others were still doing drops to the surface, patrolling hot spots for known suspects and continuing reconnaissance to ascertain new shipping paths that had been reestablished. And while he would have preferred working alongside his other crew members, he had been thrilled to receive the notification from Apone with an opportunity to put his skills to good use.

The directive was to go through their supply of surveillance equipment and design a recon plan with their remaining inventory that could most effectively cover the largest geographical area.

While he was aware the task might have been just an invention of busywork to keep him preoccupied, he still welcomed the challenge, knowing that a well-designed strategy would ultimately help the team.

He had just begun to get to work when the door opened and Vasquez walked in and set her laptop down on the table with a thud.

"Wanna tell me why the hell we're working in the equipment room today?" she asked in irritation.

Hudson looked up at her in surprise, taken aback by her bad mood. Other than their awkward meeting in the hall the morning earlier, their most recent interaction had been friendly, almost a week earlier when she visited him in the medical bay. Her tone now seemed to be dramatically in contrast to that of their last conversation.

He frowned at her. "Because I'm bored as fuck and needed to get back doing something, but I'm not cleared to leave the ship… Sorry, I didn't know Apone was going to stick you on this with me."

"And seeing as we're _partners _and we get stuck together for everything, that didn't cross your mind?" she retorted. "I was meant to be on patrol today"—Vasquez waved her hand around as she took in the sight of the storage room—"instead I'm here doing AV club with you in a fucking broom closet."

"Whoa, what's with the attitude?" Hudson snapped back at her. "How 'bout a 'thank you' for saving you the commute to work today? Or, I dunno, maybe a little, 'Welcome back, Hudson', 'how ya feelin', Hudson'?"

She huffed and sat in the chair beside him and repeated monotonously, "Welcome back Hudson, how ya feelin' Hudson."

"How kind of you to ask, Vaz! You know, I'm a little sore, I could really use a back rub." He raised his eyebrows and flashed her a reticent grin.

Vasquez looked back at her laptop. "What, you not getting enough rubbing from Dietrich?"

Hudson felt his grin disappear and he laughed dismissively, feeling uncomfortable. "Hey, it's not like that between us. She's just looking after me, that's all."

"I'm sure she is," laughed Vasquez. "Whatever Hudson, so what if you guys are doing stuff. Nobody cares, man."

Hudson looked at her disbelievingly. "Wait. Are you actually _mad _at me right now?"

Her expression seemed to change under his gaze and her eyes softened.

"No. I just… sorry, I just have a lot on my mind."

"Well, let's have it, then," Hudson replied in a sullen tone. "You seem to be in a sharing mood, so don't clam up now."

Vasquez seemed to ignore the dig and looked back at him, as if deciding whether or not to say what she was thinking. Hudson watched her.

"My parole hearing is coming up," she said. "I'm still working on the application, but I have a tentative interview scheduled for the week we get back to Gateway. I just have a lot riding on this and I'm scared of being rejected."

Hudson watched her and she looked anxious, her knee fidgeting, hands rubbing her elbows.

"Well, yeah, that sounds stressful," Hudson replied in understanding. He hesitated before saying anything more, not certain whether she would get mad at him for prying into the matter. But her irritation seemed to have been short-lived. Just the fact that she was sharing any of this likely meant they were back to being friends. "So, what is it that's raising the stakes?" he asked.

"I got offered a job—working with at-risk youth in Houston, starting in the spring… it's just for a couple months, but it would really open up a lot of doors for me… I really want this."

Vasquez was not often one to share personal details, but lately she had been opening up to him, a little bit at a time. She spoke slowly, as if talking about herself took a great amount of willpower. Hudson was conscious of that, not jumping in with comments like he otherwise might have. Instead, he took a leaf from Dietrich's book and remained silent, leaving space for her to continue talking.

"I'm… I'm tired of being completely defined by my criminal record… what I can and can't do dictated for me because of a reckless decision I made when I was a kid. I'll never forgive myself for what I did… I'll never be free of it… But I want permission to live my life… to be who I am now, not just live in the shadow of who I was back then." She looked away, her jaw tensing.

It was strange that Hudson had never fully considered how much her circumstances burdened her. She never talked about it, at least not to him or the group, and he surmised that it was likely a conversation reserved for Drake.

"Shit, Vaz, I never knew you were dealing with all that," he said sympathetically. "But listen, you got nothin' to be worried about— you're the ideal case, man! You're like, every parole officer's dream: you're a marine, serving your country, trying to work a second job so you can make a difference and _help kids_. If for some stupid reason you don't get it, you'll know that it's because the system is fucked, not because of anything you did wrong." He reached out and touched her shoulder. "So you can stop worrying and just know that you're doing as much as anyone _can possibly__ do_. You're a good person, Vaz. They'll see that."

Vasquez gazed back at him and for a moment she seemed at a loss for words. "Uh, thanks man," she finally said awkwardly. "That means a lot."

"Yeah," he said and squeezed her shoulder cheerfully.

She took a deep breath. "Hudson, I know this is a lot to ask..."

"What is it?"

"I was wondering if you might be one of my references for the hearing. I need to list people who know me well enough to provide a character reference. I can't list Drake because he has a record like me, and I'd ask Ferro, but she can be a bit of a wild card at times… Obviously, it's only if you would have something good to say about me, otherwise I guess it wouldn't really do me much good…"

Hudson laughed. "Vasquez, you idiot, of course I have good things to say about you! And I'd be happy to be a reference and talk to anyone and everyone if it meant helpin' ya out."

She released a big breath of air and she looked relieved and sincerely appreciative. "Thank you."

"Of course. Anytime." He grinned at her. "Now cheer up! The badass duo is reunited and we're about to knock this bullshit assignment outta the park!"

Vasquez smiled back at him.

. . .

"Hey."

Hudson opened his eyes to see Vasquez, still asleep beside him.

He must have moved in his sleep because he was now cuddled into her, his arm lying across her body, her arm entwined with his.

It took him a moment to realize it was Ripley's voice he was hearing and he lifted his heavy head and stared up at her tiredly.

She was freshly showered and the smell of someone clean seemed foreign. Despite her scrubbed-up appearance, Ripley looked drained and battered with scrapes on both sides of her face.

"How are you feeling?" she asked him.

Hudson imagined how it must look to Ripley. Formerly the two cockiest marines, all bravado and backtalk, now huddled next to one another, weak and wounded, groggy from a self-administered drug coma.

"Just great," he said dryly, a bit embarrassed as he uncoiled himself from Vasquez. He lightly shook her shoulder to wake her. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, rubbing them, slow to sit up.

"Sorry to wake you guys," said Ripley, an apologetic look on her face. "But I guess you'll have enough time to sleep when we're in cryo. I'm going to start to get the pods online. Whenever you're up for it, I could use another set of eyes activating the hypersleep sequence."

Hudson nodded obligingly as he tried to sit up.

Vasquez put her hands on his back and helped push him into an upright position and he groaned as pain shot through his ribs. The two of them sat side by side for a while, legs hanging over the side of the bed.

Hudson looked down at his filthy hands. He felt a bit queasy looking at his wrist, where the misaligned bone jutted out under the skin.

He drew in a breath as he stood up, leaning against the bed to steady himself. Blood rushed to his head and it took a minute for the dizziness to pass. "I don't care if it kills me, I'm gonna take a shower," he said to Vasquez with a grimace.

"It looks like it might," she replied. "You gonna manage?"

Hudson gave her a mischievous smile. "If I said 'no', would you get in there with me?"

Vasquez scoffed a laugh, "Not a chance."

She got off the bed gingerly, turning away from him as she planted her feet on the floor, likely so that he wouldn't see the pain on her face. But he could read it in her body language, the way her shoulders seemed to collapse forward, her hands nearly white knuckled as she held the bed frame.

When she eventually turned around, her face was pale, and he imagined that the thought of walking all the way to the showers must seem daunting to her.

"At least help a guy walk over there?" He shot her a tentative smile and he held his arm out.

She hobbled a step towards him and her mobility looked questionable. "Yeah, I guess I could help you with that," she said ironically as he put his arm around her, supporting her as they limped out of the medical bay and down the hall toward the locker room.

. . .

Hudson was out in the backyard of Ian and Kerri's house in Fort Worth.

He had arrived a couple days earlier and it felt strange being back and staying at the house again instead of heading straight to Louise's apartment in Dallas.

So much had happened in the eight months he had been away. While he was aboard the Sulaco, it seemed as if years had passed since her death. Now, being back, the wounds felt fresh and he was already having trouble adjusting, feeling listless and astray in a place that he had always called home.

A two-year old Avery ran around in the grass in the yard and Hudson was in the midst of helping Kerri dig out a large azalea to transplant, when the pocket of his jeans vibrated and he took out his phone. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he answered it.

"Private William Hudson?" said a voice on the other end of the phone.

"Yes."

"This is Officer Reeves from the correctional authority of Louisiana. I believe you are an acquaintance of Jenette Vasquez?"

He stopped suddenly. "Yes. Is she alright?"

"Uh, this is in regards to her parole hearing, sir, you're currently on the line with the parole board of Louisiana. We just had a few questions to ask you about her."

"Oh. Right, of course, yeah—yes. Go ahead." He exhaled, remembering that months back, Vasquez had asked if she could list him as a reference. He was so caught off guard for a second, fearing the person on the phone was going to tell him that something bad had happened to her. He tried to regain his composure, inwardly kicking himself for not not being better prepared, hoping he wouldn't screw this up for her.

Kerri looked up at him curiously, and he silently indicated to her that everything was fine.

"What is your relationship with Ms. Vasquez?"

"She's a fellow marine, First Battalion Bravo Team. She's my partner in the field."

"Are you aware of Ms. Vasquez's history of violence and criminal background?" asked the officer.

"_Private_ Vasquez," corrected Hudson. "She's a Private, First Class."

"Right," said the officer. "Are you aware of _Private _Vasquez's history of violence?"

Hudson bristled at the unjust implication, the judgemental tone.

"I'm aware of the reason she was incarcerated," he said. "She's spoken about it. I know that it was an isolated incident and that she's committed to doing everything she can to serve her time and make things right…"

There was a brief pause on the other end and then a new voice asked a question. "Have you ever had a romantic relationship with Private Vasquez, Sir?"

"No," Hudson said, caught off guard again. "She's my squad partner."

"You realize why we have to ask…" said the voice, perhaps sensing a slight hostility from Hudson's end. "You work closely together, she's confided in you about personal information and when you answered the phone just now you asked if she was_ alright_..."

Hudson felt himself growing a bit embarrassed but he kept his composure, his voice even. "Like I said, she's my partner. Our relationship is professional, but she's also my friend and of course I care what happens to her."

There was another silence on the other end of the phone, and the absence of noise made Hudson feel uncomfortable. He pictured Vasquez's face, remembering how vulnerable she looked that day in the storage room when she had confided in him about her parole. It was strange to hear her being spoken about like she was a criminal who couldn't be trusted.

"Look, what do you folks want to know here?" Hudson continued, hearing frustration coming out in his own voice. "Private Vasquez is one of the most valuable members of the team. She is dedicated and hardworking, not just as a marine, but in her everyday life as well. More than anything, she wants this so she can work for an outreach program to _help disadvantaged youth_… And I know she did an awful thing all those years ago… I know that she may seem a bit rough around the edges… but she's got a good heart. I know for a fact that she's filled with regret over what happened and her whole life is now committed to just making things right. You have to trust me on this. She's a good person. She deserves to be free."

.

The call stayed on his mind for the rest of the day, and he couldn't help but have a sinking feeling that he had ruined her chances at parole with his off-the-cuff responses.

That afternoon, he sent her a message.

_'Hey Vasquez,'_ he wrote._ 'They called me this morning for the reference. Not sure if you had your interview yet… if you haven't already, good luck! Rooting for ya buddy.'_

That night, after he had helped Ian with the dishes from dinner, he heard the sound of an incoming message and he glanced at his phone to see her reply.

_'Had the interview today,'_ was all the message said.

Hudson walked out onto the back porch, eyes on his phone, a beer in his hand.

_'And?'_ he wrote back.

He sat on the steps of the porch, waiting for her message back. But after several minutes with no response, he began to grow anxious, sipping his beer and running his hand through his hair nervously. When he couldn't take the suspense any longer, he pressed the button to call her.

She picked up after a few seconds, her face looking a bit flustered and he suddenly worried that it was weird that he was calling her. They had never called one another to talk before.

"Vaz, you're keeping me in suspense here. How did it go?"

He could tell she was sitting on the bed of one of the small rental rooms in Gateway Station. Her face looked overwhelmed and she seemed at a loss, barely managing to say the words, "I got it… Hudson, I got it."

"You got it?!" he repeated in excitement. "You're out on parole?!"

She nodded with a smile, but she seemed to be in shock, the screen quaking slightly and he suspected her hands were shaking.

"I actually just found out about twenty minutes ago," said Vasquez. "I think it's only starting to sink in now," she laughed. Slowly, a smile spread across her face and it became clear to him what a pivotal moment in her life he was witnessing.

"Holy shit, Vaz, that's so amazing! You must have rocked the interview!"

"It went okay," she said modestly, the smile still on her face.

"Well I guess so," said Hudson. "I'm so fucking proud of you!" The words had slipped out but felt strange spoken aloud, a bit too intimate for their current level of friendship. To correct it, he added gruffly, "You gonna get drunk tonight and celebrate?"

"I wish," she laughed. "But it's just me here."

Hudson felt surprised. "Oh, I don't know why I just assumed Drake was there with you."

"No. They shipped him out to Florida yesterday morning with a group of others. They're helping with the flood relief in Miami. I was supposed to head there tomorrow if my parole was denied… Drake doesn't even know yet. You're the first person I've talked to."

Her voice seemed to trail off a bit as Hudson considered that.

"Well," he said, holding his bottle of beer up to the screen. "If you're not going to celebrate this, I will. This is a big deal."

Vasquez smiled back at him and disappeared from the screen for a moment until she reappeared, holding a bottle of bourbon and a glass. She showed him the label on the bottle so he could see that it was a ten year-old small batch of Kentucky straight.

"Nice!" he said appreciatively and she grinned again.

"I thought I'd have some of this tonight whether I got it or not." She uncorked the bottle and poured a bit into her glass. "I'm glad I don't have to drink it alone."

Hudson beamed at the image of her on the screen. Although they were separated by hundreds of miles of atmosphere, he felt lucky to be the one with her at that moment.

"Me too," he said. He raised his beer to her in congratulations. "Cheers, Vaz."

They both sipped their drinks.

"So when do you head to Houston?" he asked and as she swallowed her sip of bourbon contentedly.

"Tomorrow."

"And you start your job, when?"

"Monday. So I have a couple days to get settled in. They arranged a place for me to stay, but I feel like I need a full day to get my head straight. God, I'm nervous… I don't even have proper clothes to wear for my first day."

"Ah, don't worry about stuff like that," said Hudson reassuringly. "They didn't hire you because of how you dress. Just be yourself and everything will fall into place."

She nodded and her dark eyes connected with his through the screen.

"So we're gonna be neighbours soon," Hudson said cheerfully, breaking the silence.

She laughed. "Neighbours. Right. You know Houston is at least a four hour drive from Fort Worth, right?"

"Not if you take the bullet train from Dallas, man, it's like an hour or something. I could come down sometime and we could celebrate in person."

She drank from her glass thoughtfully. "Well yeah, if you want to come down."

"Yeah?"

"Why not? Might be fun. Maybe in a couple weeks when I'm settled in. I'll let you know."

. . .

Hudson showered the day off of him, the water running dark with dirt and dried blood.

Whenever he closed his eyes, the images from the day would come back to him. The memory of his teammates' screams still ringing through his ears, the unnerving alien slither still seared into his memory, replaying on the inside of his eyelids like an old-fashioned projector.

His body felt weak and it took every bit of strength he had to get a handful of soap and begin to scrub the caked-on grime from his skin.

He washed with one hand, keeping the other arm stationary, pulled in close to his body. His wrist throbbed as water pelted down, feeling the swelling and acute ache of a broken bone. Now that the filth was streaming off of him, he could see that his wrist was dark purple in colour. He purposely didn't look at it too closely, preferring not to gauge the topography of what protruded or the extent of its misalignment.

He braced his good arm against the tiled wall and dropped his head down, water flowing over the back of his neck, over his face and into his mouth. He sputtered.

With the heat of the steam came delirium: did that day actually happen? What were the chances that he had just dreamed the entire thing?

But when his mind cleared again, he felt the pain of reality all too intensely. It was the same as the feeling he had waking up that first morning after learning of Louise's death, of his mother's—that it wasn't just a bad dream, that it was real, and somehow he would have to find a way to go on.

He could hear the sound of Vasquez's shower running beside his.

Without meaning to, his mind pictured her undressing, pulling off her tank top and underwear. He imagined her slowly sliding back the curtain of his shower stall and walking towards him and into the stream of hot water, pressing her body against his, her skin slick and wet.

Hudson exhaled and his knees felt weak. He turned the water colder and tried to shake the image from his mind.

After drying off within his stall, he dressed himself awkwardly with one hand, pulling on just his boxers and the torn pants of his uniform. He left his shirt where it hung on the hook, not even wanting to think about the strain of getting his arms through the sleeves—taking it off had been bad enough.

When he limped out, he saw Vasquez sitting on a bench by their lockers, dressed in a fresh tank top and briefs, staring down at something she held in her hands.

He felt his palms sweat a bit as he walked over to her, trying to block out the vision he had of her in the shower.

Her dark eyes looked up and scanned over him. "It must have been pretty hard," she said.

He stared at her blankly, wondering if he had heard her correctly.

"Showering with your arm like that," she continued. "That shit looks mangled, man."

"Oh," he choked in response. "Right."

She looked at him quizzically.

His good hand went to his face and he rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, just feeling a bit off right now."

She looked around the room at all of the lockers that had belonged to their fallen teammates. "I guess it would be weird if we didn't feel like shit right now."

He nodded and as his eyes fell on the different lockers, he could almost hear the familiar commotion of voices filling the room.

"Who woulda known… that our crew would be so light on the way back," he stated sadly.

Vasquez didn't respond, just fidgeted with the item in her hands. It appeared to be a note of some kind, folded into a square, the paper worn and discoloured. Even folded up, it appeared cluttered with writing. She held the note gently, her thumbs moving across the paper.

"What's that?" he asked softly, and she just shook her head without looking up.

"Just… something I can't let go of."

Leaning against the wall of lockers, she stood up slowly and opened the metal door to her locker. He watched as she carefully stowed the note into the pocket of a pair of cargo pants that hung inside, her hand lingering a bit before she swung the locker door shut, her head hung, the grief and exhaustion noticeable, even with her back to him.

She released a deep breath and her eyes fell on Drake's locker beside her own. She stood there, staring, swaying slightly, until Hudson finally moved toward her, touching her gently on the back.

"Come on," he said softly.

At his touch, her head turned in his direction but not enough to to look at him. She nodded, and took one last look at Drake's locker before she reached her arm around Hudson's shoulder and he assisted her out of the locker room.

.

Adjoining the locker room was the vast space that held the cryo pods. Ripley stood at the main console, touching the screen as she ran through a set of procedures.

Newt was sitting at a table off to the side of the room, where she seemed to be in a daze, halfway through eating a plate of food from the mess hall, her fork poised in midair. She was also freshly washed, her formerly matted blonde hair now clean and combed-through. She looked smaller than usual, her slight frame almost lost within an oversized army-green T-shirt.

As Hudson and Vasquez approached, Ripley looked up at them, "How you guys holding up? I raided the kitchen, there's some food there on the table if you want."

At the sound of Ripley's voice, Newt seemed startled, her fork falling from her hand and clattering onto the table as she looked up.

"Hudson!" came her small voice and she got up from her chair and ran to his side, stopping short of hugging him as he and Vasquez staggered over.

"Hey Scout!" he responded enthusiastically as Vasquez broke away from him to seat herself down at the table. Hudson reached out his fist to Newt and she bumped it happily. "I heard some pretty crazy things happened while Vasquez and I were asleep!"

"The monster came off the ship and it hurt Bishop and it chased me and Ripley," said Newt in a sincere voice.

"I heard. That sounds really scary." Hudson said sympathetically and he slowly eased himself into a chair at the table across from Vasquez. Newt followed him closely and sat beside him. "I also heard how brave you were, helping Ripley thrash its ugly butt out into space!"

Newt gave a shy smile, watching him tentatively.

"You did good, Scout," said Hudson, nudging her shoulder gently. "Things are going to be alright now. Clear sailing from here, right Ripley?"

Ripley nodded, abandoning the console and pulling up a rolling chair over to where everyone now sat. "That's right," she agreed. "All we have to do is fall asleep, then when we wake up we'll be lightyears away from this place." Ripley smiled at the girl. "But first, you need to eat some more of your dinner."

Ripley moved the barely-eaten plate of food closer to Newt and the girl begrudgingly began picking at it again. When she stuck her fork into a large, nondescript chunk of meat and raised it off the plate, struggling to bite it, Hudson gave a bit of a laugh. After everything she had gone through and the poor kid had to get there on _meatloaf night_.

Vasquez moved in next to Newt with a fork and knife and wordlessly began helping the girl cut the meat into bite-sized pieces. He couldn't help but smile as he watched Vasquez silently interact with Newt in such a genuine manner.

"Well that is most definitely broken," said Ripley, and when he turned his attention back to her, she was staring at his swollen wrist, which he was cradling close to his body. Now that the dirt had been washed clean, the injury was more visible, the skin around his wrist an impressive shade of purple. "Here, let me take a look," and she indicated for him to come closer.

"S'okay Ripley, we're going into cryo soon anyway."

"Come here," Ripley persisted goodnaturedly.

He put his wrist up on the table so she could take a look at it.

After a moment, she said, "We should really set the bone before you go into cryo," and Hudson made a face, feeling squeamish at the idea. But he didn't want to appear weak in front of Vasquez so he offered his wrist to Ripley, watching her nervously.

She held his forearm securely and gripped his hand. "Take a deep breath," she said. "On the count of three, okay?"

But after just saying, "One," she proceeded to pull the arm straight and his wrist bone gave an audible click that even made Vasquez grimace.

A violent jolt of pain followed the unexpected action and he dropped his head to the table, stifling a yell into his arm so that it inadvertently came out as a whimper: something he was not proud of.

Ripley had done the classic parent thing, the not-fully-counting-to-three schtick. He had seen Ian do the same thing with Avery when pulling off a bandage.

He remembered the embrace Ripley gave Newt in the elevator, how protective she was of her, and his mind put the pieces together.

When he eventually regained his voice again, he asked, "You have kids Ripley?"

Ripley had acquired a roll of gauze and was now wrapping his wrist, and she looked up at him in surprise.

"I did," she said after a pause and Hudson could see that she held an incredible amount of sadness. "I had a daughter."

Both he and Vasquez were silent, watching Ripley, an array of emotions flashing across her face before she continued.

"After the incident aboard the Nostromo, I escaped on a shuttle, but I ended up being in hypersleep for 57 years. I missed most of her life and by the time I got back, she was already gone."

Vasquez looked down at the floor.

"Shit, Ripley. That's a raw deal," Hudson said sympathetically. He felt like all of a sudden, he understood her a bit better. "Well, I bet you were pretty good at it—being a parent."

Ripley looked back at him, a faint smile coming to her lips. "Thanks," she said quietly. A moment passed and then she said, "You know, when we were down there in the processing plant, you could have left, gotten out on your own, but you stayed."

"I wasn't about to leave you and Newt."

"I know." She looked back at him appreciatively and for the first time, he could tell that they were friends.

She continued to wrap his wrist, taking a dull metal knife from the pile of cutlery she had taken from the mess hall, incorporating it as a splint, wrapping it in between layers of gauze to keep the wrist straight.

"Cutting edge, huh?" she said to him and she finished the splint off by tying the two ends of gauze together. When Hudson chuckled appreciatively at the joke, Ripley smiled. "Thought you'd like that."

"Way to take a stab at it Ripley," he quipped back.

He tested its movement now, his forearm and hand moving monolithically together in one stiff motion. It hurt a lot less now that it was straight and its movement inhibited. "Seriously, thanks," he said sincerely.

"I'm surprised you let me," Ripley replied with a shrug, "—you have the right to bare arms."

Hudson hooted with laughter. Newt looked up from her food and grinned, uncertain of what was funny but enjoying it nonetheless. Beside her, Vasquez groaned.

"Oh my God, stop, both of you," Vasquez said in annoyance, but Hudson could detect a hint of laughter trying to enter into her expression.

"Come on, Vaz, that was legit funny," Hudson chided, nudging her.

"Never have I looked forward to being frozen alive more than at this very moment," she said stubbornly. But as Hudson continued to nudge her, a reluctant smile finally broke out on her face and her hand went to her forehead disbelievingly. Hudson leaned back in his chair, satisfied with himself.

. . .

It was the first day of May, 2178, already almost halfway through his two months of leave when Hudson rode the bullet train down to Houston.

The high speed train reminded him of Louise, the dozen-or-so times they had taken it north to Wichita Falls to visit her parents.

He had already been to visit Valerie and Mitch in the second week that he had been back. It had been an emotional visit, seeing Louise's parents and her brother Michael for the first time in person since before her death. They visited over dinner, saving the harder conversations for after they ate when the glasses of Cabernet became more generous, both wine and feelings flowing more freely.

At one point in the evening, Valerie retrieved a small box and placed it in Hudson's hand and a lump formed in his throat, already knowing what was going to be inside. When he opened it to see the thin platinum engagement ring he had made for Louise, still shining and barely worn, he broke down and Valerie hugged him tightly as they both cried.

While the visit had felt healing and like it was something he had needed, he left feeling raw and exhausted. He fell asleep on the train on the way home and was halfway to Waco by the time he woke up.

The following day, he physically couldn't get out of bed, as if he was grieving for the first time all over again. Ian and Kerri just let him sleep, only knocking on his door in the evening to try to coax him to eat something.

But in the two weeks that followed, he was beginning to adjust to the feeling of being back home without her. He even spent some time in Dallas with Trey and Asha, walking through the neighborhoods he and Louise used to frequent; the restaurants they used to eat at, the roads they used to go running on, even passing by the bar where they had met.

He felt like he was slowly getting stronger, continuing to regain his life with each small step, listening to her voice in his head telling him that it was okay to laugh, to feel happiness, despite the pain he carried.

Although he was adjusting, he was also beginning to realize how estranged he felt from Fort Worth and Dallas, as if at some point, both places had ceased feeling like home and he was just starting to notice.

Now, as he sat on the train, he felt a bit nervous. He was on his way to visit Vasquez. He was looking forward to seeing her.

It was almost as if his two worlds had flipped and it was the Sulaco that now felt more like home than anywhere else. Seeing Vasquez would be like getting a little dose of something familiar.

But as the train approached the station in Houston and his excitement grew, he realized it was more than just wanting a connection to his other life that made him look forward to seeing Vasquez— it was _her _that he missed.

When he walked out of the train, he saw her right away. Her golden skin soaking up sunlight as she leaned up against a chain-link fence, light reflected in her mirrored aviators.

Her appearance had changed in the one month that he hadn't seen her. She looked taller. And her hair was different: buzzed shorter at the sides and a bit longer on top so that a cowlick of hair swooped forward and some pieces drooped a bit over her forehead.

Then there were the clothes. She was dressed in fitted black pants, a collarless linen blazer with the sleeves rolled up and a flattering v-neck top underneath. She wore a black boot with a bit of a heel, which was likely what added to her height. Everything was simple and without detail, which made it difficult to place exactly what about it looked so good. Whatever it was, she looked polished and impressive, like she was finally able to outwardly present who she really was.

"You got a haircut," he said as he walked up to her.

"So did you," she replied and took off her sunglasses so she could look him over. He felt a bit underdressed compared to her in just a black t-shirt and grey jeans, but at least he had gotten a fresh haircut and a crisp trim of the month's worth of beard he had grown.

She smiled at him and they came together in a hug. It was strange how meeting in a new location seemed to change the dynamic between them. It was the first time they had ever hugged, yet it felt like a natural way to greet a friend outside of their usual setting. It was like they were free to interact without being watched or scrutinized.

Vasquez gave him a couple hits on the back before she pulled away and her hand went to his face, a pat on the cheek showing that she had noticed his new beard.

"Thanks for makin' the trip down, man," she said.

"Yeah, no problem—wanted to say congrats in person." That's when he remembered what he carried in his hand and he held it out to her. "Brought you somethin'."

"Fuck you," she said with a frown as she accepted the paper bag from him and pulled out the limited edition bottle of bourbon he had picked up for her. She looked at it in awe. "You jackass. This is a really nice one."

He smiled. He had never seen Vasquez receive a gift before, but he could have guessed that would be how she would react.

"Ah, it's just something small to celebrate," he told her. "I mean, how often does your squad partner get granted parole?"

"Only once, with any luck," she replied, shaking her head. "Thanks man." She placed the bourbon carefully back inside the bag like she was worried it might shatter at the slightest movement. "So, what should we do?"

"You're the one living here, show me around the place."

They walked from the train station and all through the downtown without a particular destination in mind, talking easily as they strolled. It was late afternoon and the sun was hot, but as they passed through the shade of tall buildings and urban trees, it felt like the perfect temperature.

They walked through a couple of parks before winding up in Market Square, where the space felt welcoming; a paradoxical mix of tranquility and liveliness. They took a seat on the soft green lawn.

And because they had the bottle handy, they cracked open the bourbon and poured it into a couple paper cups they had gotten from a street vendor.

"So yeah, a few challenges, but it's been really good so far," Vasquez concluded, speaking of her new position. "I'm learning a lot and generally, most people in the office seem pretty accepting of me."

"That's great to hear, Vaz. I'm so glad things are going good so far," said Hudson jovially. He held up his cup and touched it to hers. "Here's to"—he thought about it for a second—"finally being free to be yourself."

She pretended to gag at his sentimental words, but then she drank along with him and he could see her smile behind her paper cup.

"You makin' friends?" Hudson asked after a short silence had passed.

"Kind of," Vasquez replied. "I mean, I like a lot of the people I work with, but none of them are really my age. I don't see many people outside of work at the moment, I live a bit for the work week and I try to work as much as I can on weekends." She turned the paper cup in her hands. "To be honest, it's been weird spending my time here without Drake. For so many years, we were always assigned work together in between deployments. So yeah, I guess I have felt a bit isolated here."

"You need to meet people."

She scoffed.

"Really," he continued, "people in Houston are seriously laid back, you could make some solid friends out here if you just opened up a bit."

"I don't need friends. I'm fine on my own," she replied stubbornly.

"Well I know _you are_, but think of all those poor people here that you're denying your company to!"

"Yeah, _right_."

"Vaz, you're the most fun outta anyone I know. You don't even know it! Seriously! I'll show you!" Confident from a whiskey buzz, Hudson raised his hand towards the setting sun and waved over to the silhouette of the small group of people sitting several yards away from them. "Hey!"

"Hudson, no, I'm gonna kill you!" Vasquez hissed through clenched teeth.

"You guys want to try this expensive bourbon we're drinking?" he persisted, ignoring her protests.

But the closest member of the group of three was leaning forward, engaged. And when Hudson confirmed the offer, they rose from their seats in the grass and joined Hudson and Vasquez's group to make a small circle of five.

"I'm Will," he introduced himself to the two men and a woman, who all looked to be about their age. "This is my friend Jenette. We're celebrating tonight."

"What are you celebrating?" one of them asked. Hudson turned to Vasquez with a grin, waiting for her to answer.

Vasquez put on a smile, "New beginnings" she offered.

Their three new acquaintances drained their plastic cups of wine and Hudson handed Vasquez the bottle of bourbon and she doled out a generous amount to each of them. Hudson was slightly relieved when none of them automatically shot back the bourbon, but knew enough to smell and sip at it, asking Vasquez about the bottle, appreciating the spicy notes and complexity of flavour.

As the sun lowered beneath the surrounding buildings, park lights lit the space, dousing them in a warm, ambient glow. It wasn't long before their company doubled as another group joined them, inexplicably drawn to the hum of socialization, welcomed in through the spirit of community. They passed the bottle of bourbon around, sharing it. Around them, the others smiled, friendly and curious of them, their eyes widening as they mentioned they were Colonial Marines, skeptical at first until Hudson and Vasquez began easily recounting funny and perilous stories of their time in service. Following that, conversation circulated effortlessly, the others instantly intrigued, moving closer.

At one point Hudson had been engaged in an in-depth conversation with someone to his left when he realized that he hadn't spoken to Vasquez in quite a while. But when he glanced in her direction, he was thrilled to see that she was smiling, chatting with a couple sitting across from her. When he overheard them requesting her contact info, he felt like a proud parent.

As the others continued talking amongst themselves, Hudson leaned towards Vasquez, touching her elbow. "How ya doin'?"

She held the bottle up to Hudson ceremoniously and he could see it was just about empty. "Looks like we killed the bottle," she said quietly to him, looking a bit rueful.

Hudson looked around the circle at the new friends they had made, the others chatting and enjoying themselves. "Actually, I think we brought it to life," he replied in a low voice so only she could hear.

She smiled back at him, "I'm starving. You want to get outta here and get some food?"

"Definitely."

They left what remained of the bottle and said their goodbyes to their new friends.

"See, was that so hard?" Hudson asked her as they walked away, "They loved you."

"You're lucky they were cool people, otherwise I woulda gotten up and left you there with them," she said obstinately. But despite the cynical comment, he could tell that, deep down, she was delighted. She was doing a good job of keeping the smile off her face, but her happiness still shone through, unmistakable in her eyes.

When they settled down at an outdoor restaurant, the food took a while to arrive, but the beers came out swiftly. At once, they were both drunk as beer mixed with bourbon in their otherwise empty stomachs. Still, they remained unconcerned, telling each other stories and laughing without reservations.

But when the food finally arrived, and they passed each other dishes of tapas, commenting on interesting spices and flavours, Vasquez seemed to grow increasingly distracted.

"You got quiet. What's up?" Hudson asked her gently. She had been watching people as they passed by the outdoor tables of the restaurant and she looked back at him, appearing slightly embarrassed.

"Sorry. It's nothing," she said.

"No, really," pushed Hudson. "You seemed far away for a moment there, what were you thinkin' about?"

She sighed, "I was just remembering… a time when I first got to juvie and I everyday I used to sit there for hours thinking, 'how did I get here?'" Her expression was earnest, and it felt like he was getting a rare glimpse into her former life. "But now," she continued, "sitting here, eating good food and drinking good beer and knowing that I'm a free person... I'm getting to work at something I enjoy and I get to travel to different star systems and be a _colonial marine_... So now I'm thinking, 'how did I get_ here_?', you know? How the fuck did I get here even after everything I've done?"

As Hudson stared back at her, he could almost see the internal conflict in her mind. It was as if the moment she had begun to feel content with her life, her instincts were there to question it, shut it down and remind her she was still guilty, undeserving of happiness.

"You got to where you are now because it was about time life cut you a break," he said, only partially joking. "Vasquez, you're here because you're you. You're smart and hardworking and you're so goddamn hard on yourself." He paused and their eyes locked momentarily. "At some point, you gotta just allow yourself to be happy. It's okay to be happy."

.

They stumbled drunkenly as they walked back to her apartment. They hung onto each other without really realizing it, Vasquez grasping the back of his T-shirt, Hudson hooking his thumb through a belt loop of her trousers.

The walk home felt like a blur, but they were still talking and laughing, despite their slurred conversation.

"You sure it's okay if I stay the night?" he asked as they walked up the steps of her townhouse apartment unit.

"Well, we can't put you on a train like this."

She opened the door, almost falling in as she did and they both laughed.

Her unit was small, a bachelor apartment with a small kitchen and living space and then a partition wall with a bed behind it. It was simple and surprisingly modern, sparsely furnished and clean, save for a few articles of her clothing scattered around.

"So this is it. Not much, but I do have a sofa… and a bed."

Her voice had grown quieter, slightly suggestive at the word _bed_. Her brown eyes looked up at him, testing his reaction.

He stared back at her and suddenly he felt like he couldn't look away. They seemed to be moving closer to one another, as if being drawn together by some unknown force.

His heart pounded furiously though his shirt and in his ears. Then, the space between them closed and their bodies came together and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, hugging her closely to him. Her hands clenched the muscles of his back and her cheek grazed against his and it felt so good to be close to her. Vasquez was breathing heavily against him and he realized that he was as well, his lungs demanding more oxygen to fuel his rapid heart rate.

But then her hands travelled between them, down to his belt buckle, drunkenly fumbling, trying to undo it.

"Vaz," he breathed. His hand came down on top of hers as his belt opened, her hands working at the button of his jeans. He swallowed hard. "Vaz, come on," he tried again, but this time he took her hands firmly and held them still, up against his chest.

He had no idea why he was stopping her, _why the fuck _he was denying every primal instinct inside of him that wanted her to continue whatever it was she had planned on doing. He wanted to kiss her and feel her bare skin against his, feel the intensity of their bodies connecting. It was almost unbearable how much he wanted it, but at the same time, so much about it didn't feel right. They were drunk, acting on impulses that couldn't be trusted, not thinking about the consequences; how it wouldn't be fair to Dietrich, to Drake, or to themselves.

Vasquez was still breathing hard, but she had stopped moving, her hands still pressed against his chest. She was looking down now, her breathing growing less audible and suddenly the silence was deafening in his ears, the feeling of awkwardness creeping between them but only fully confirmed when he placed his hand on her cheek and she pulled away.

She didn't say anything, didn't even look at him as she walked away dejectedly, disappearing behind the bedroom partition.

"Fuck," he uttered and for a while he stood still, not knowing whether he should try to talk to her or whether he should just leave and try his luck at getting a late train home.

After a few moments of hearing nothing, he presumed Vasquez had gone to sleep and he moved over to her sofa.

He propped a cushion under his head and laid down for the night, anticipating a rough morning ahead.

.

A little over a month later, Hudson headed back to Gateway Station and boarded the Sulaco for deployment. In previous years of service, the ones in which he had been with Louise, he would have felt cheated, having to leave at the beginning of June, right when the Texas weather was at its most beautiful.

But things felt different now. He was just two missions away from retirement, and he was now set on just getting through the next fifteen months so he could receive his pension, get out and begin a new life.

As the crew boarded the Sulaco and reunited in the locker room, the space was loud and chaotic as everyone greeted one another, catching up and striking up the usual banter. When he spotted Vasquez, she walked over to him.

"Hey."

"What, you talkin' to me now?" he replied bitterly.

She subtly motioned for him to follow her and begrudgingly, he let her lead him behind a bank of unoccupied lockers in the far corner of the room, out of sight from the others.

"Look… about the past few weeks," she began tentatively. "I guess I just felt embarrassed about what happened in Houston… I was drunk, I didn't know what I was doing."

Hudson recalled the morning that followed their night out, waking her up to tell her he was leaving, the visible shame she wore on her face as the nights' events began to come back to her. He hadn't expected it to hurt him so deeply to see the regret she held, the remorseful, "Oh no," that had slipped from her lips as she remembered.

The brief, passionate connection between them had been nothing more than a mistake.

"It's fine," Hudson had told her at the time. "Nothing happened." And when she was silent, he tried to laugh it off awkwardly, making a joke that it was his fault for bringing the bourbon. After a tense goodbye, he left feeling regretful and disappointed, like all the fun they had the night before had been erased.

He had reached out to her multiple times with messages in the month that followed, even tried calling her more than once to talk and smooth things over. Every time, she had ignored him.

He studied her face now, feeling his patience growing thin, the hurt coming to the surface again. "Yeah, I get it. It was a mistake."

"Yeah it was," she said intently. "And I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to anyone else about it… actually, it might be best if you just didn't tell anyone you came down to Houston in the first place."

Hudson laughed spitefully. "You're something else, you know that, Vasquez?" He was about to walk away, when he turned back to her in annoyance. "I came down to Houston because I wanted to do something nice. I wanted to see you and congratulate you, and I _thought _we had a good time, but now I feel like I have to apologize for it. I can't tell you how much that sucks."

He was walking away when she caught his arm to stop him and he turned to face her again.

Her expression had changed and there was a look of fear in her eyes. "I fucked up, okay?" she said softly and her voice was sincere. "I don't regret that night… I had a great time," she smiled a bit and he could tell that she was recalling the warmth of the night, the feeling of joy and laughter and friendship. "I only regret how I ruined things at the end."

She suddenly looked small and vulnerable and as she uttered the words, "I'm sorry," Hudson felt his annoyance disappearing and he sighed.

"It's fine." He quickly pulled her into a hug.

He was surprised to feel her hug him back tightly, breathing out her tension against his chest, and Hudson did his best to ignore the fluttering sensation in his stomach. They both seemed to hold on for a second longer than what felt natural before pulling away, looking around to make sure no one had seen.

"We good?" he asked her and she nodded.

. . .

Hudson stared down at the screen on the computer console in front of him, reviewing the hypersleep and trajectory sequences that he and Ripley had entered. Neither of them were particularly familiar with initiating either protocol, but together, they had fumbled through it. He was fairly confident in what they had entered, but considering all they had been though, dying in their sleep on their way home would be a seriously unfortunate fuck-up.

When Ripley wheeled in the gurney with a still-unconscious Hicks, Hudson helped her move him into one of the cryopods. Ripley took a moment to reposition him so that he appeared comfortable, then she placed her hand on Hicks' and stood silently by his side for a moment.

Hudson wasn't sure why he was surprised. He had noticed that Hicks had been a bit enamoured by Ripley; protective of her. However, it hadn't occurred to him that Ripley would have been one to return the sentiment.

Hudson and Vasquez both said goodnight to Newt as Ripley lifted her into a pod and began talking with her quietly. Then, Hudson helped walk Vasquez down the vast row of cryopods, most of them destined to sit empty for the journey home.

"Any preference?" he asked her glumly.

Vasquez shook her head and they moved to a pod two down from Hicks. She held onto his arm as she eased herself down, then she pulled her legs up and looked up at him. "How did we get here?" she asked vaguely.

He was reminded of their conversation over dinner in Houston a year ago, when she had posed a similar question. Except at that time, it was because life was actually going her way. Now things felt surreal and uncertain, the raw waves of grief constantly resurfacing. He too had been questioning why they had lived when so many of their friends had died.

Hudson gazed back at her sadly. "I don't know," he said. "I mean, it's a fucking miracle we both even got outta there… But we did."

Vasquez said nothing, just offering her hand to him, her dark eyebrows turned up, anxious. He gripped her hand firmly.

A sudden, vivid memory flashed through his mind. The vision of being pulled into the floor, Vasquez's hand outstretched, her eyes wide with fear. He thought it would be the last time he ever saw her. As he made his escape, he remembered clinging to the hope that she was alive and that he could avoid death just long enough to know that she was alright.

And because life was short and he was grateful, he looked back at her sincerely and said, "I'm glad you're _here_, Vaz."

He felt her hand pull away from her grasp, her fingers snapping off of his, transitioning into a few simplified moves from the handshake they had made up years ago, drunk at the bar. He smiled, surprised that she had remembered it.

"You too, man," she said quietly.

When the computer sounded in warning that the pods would be closing shortly, he reluctantly pulled his hand away and moved into the cryopod beside her.

"Sleep tight, everyone," came Ripley's voice from a couple pods over.

"Hasta mañana."

"Here's hoping there is a _mañana_."

As the transparent lids began to descend, Hudson closed his eyes, feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, but thankful to be alive.

He thought about the events that had defined his survival.

The vision of Louise telling him to open his eyes. The sight of Newt in danger fueling his anger and determination.

The fortuity of coming across Apone's pulse rifle, perfectly placed, still loaded.

Finding Dietrich and tragically affirming the end of her life, then using the same pistol to shoot an alien at close range to protect Ripley and Newt, the same pistol that Ripley later used to help protect him as she and Vasquez fired from the dropship.

He thought about the sacrifice Gorman had made to keep Vasquez alive and her equally impossible narrative in which she just barely escaped, her own fate balanced on a knife edge.

Existence, it seemed, was just an endless combination of chance occurrences, where the even smallest thing could be responsible for fatally ending a life or keeping it going for a little bit longer. Maybe life was simply the act of narrowly missing every opportunity for death, and having to bear witness when others were not so lucky.

Hudson's eyelids grew heavy and he let his head fall to the side, gazing through the transparent glass at his partner and friend. As his tired mind began to shut down, he wondered if, in an alternate reality, there was a version of this day that didn't end with their escape and the journey home, a second chance and a new beginning awaiting them when they woke.

.

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A/N: When I started this story, I thought it was going to be a few short chapters about Vasquez and Hudson making their escape... I still can't quite figure out how it morphed into something so long and convoluted. So, I completely commend you if you made it to the end! Thank you so much for reading, and a special thanks to those who have followed along from the beginning and have put up with my slow writing and long delays between chapter postings.

If you're interested, this story continues (yes, there is even more) in a sequel called 'Captivity', which I wrote prior to this.

Thank you to AdmiralCats for the kind words and encouragement along the way! x


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